The Latest from Boing Boing

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• With a Little Help hardcover unboxing
• Why Flickr didn't create Instagram
• NYT on Banks and Wikileaks: "a troubling prospect"
• Christmas Lights (Boing Boing Flickr Pool)
• It may be Christmas, but it's still Caturday
• Vince Guaraldi Trio: My Little Drum (from "A Charlie Brown Christmas")
• Did John Wilkes Booth get away?
• Happy Holidays and New Year's wishes, from David Silverman (The Simpsons)
• "This photo was invited and added to the Abandoned Dark Creepy group."
• Cambridge university refuses to censor student's thesis on chip-and-PIN vulnerabilities
• Indecision Points
• Using tape to make wireframe sculptures
• Village Voice's worst songs of 2010
• Tennessee anti-terrorism officials put ACLU on map of "terrorism events and other suspicious activity"
• London's sewermen say: bin your fat, don't flush it

With a Little Help hardcover unboxing Posted: 25 Dec 2010 10:07 PM PST Hal Stern loves the With a Little Help limited edition hardcover.

Why Flickr didn't create Instagram Posted: 25 Dec 2010 07:17 PM PST Wondering why Flickr didn't try to kickstart the Instagram-style social networking photo revolution years ago? It might have were its efforts not 'squashed relentlessly' internally. Unfortunately, Flickr is owned by Yahoo. [MG Siegler]

NYT on Banks and Wikileaks: "a troubling prospect" Posted: 25 Dec 2010 05:46 PM PST A New York Times editorial today on the recent actions of Bank America, Visa, PayPal, and Mastercard to block payments to Wikileaks says the moves raise "troubling questions," given the fact that Wikileaks has not been charged or convicted of any crime: What would happen if a clutch of big banks decided that a particularly irksome blogger or other organization was "too risky"? What if they decided -- one by one -- to shut down financial access to a newspaper that was about to reveal irksome truths about their operations? This decision should not be left solely up to business-as-usual among the banks. Banks and Wikileaks (NYT)

Christmas Lights (Boing Boing Flickr Pool) Posted: 25 Dec 2010 05:32 PM PST Boing Boing reader Camera John shared this photograph in the Boing Boing Flickr Pool, and explains: I started zoomed in and out of focus. During the exposure I zoomed out and focused it. The best way to get it in focus during the exposure requires a little prep work. First zoom all the way out or to your stopping point and focus on the tree/subject. This is where everything should be lined up at, at the end of the exposure. Next take a small piece of masking tape an put it on the focusing ring. Put another piece, aligned with the focusing ring tape, on the zoom/focal length ring. Now you can see where to stop. Zoom in, unfocus the camera and take your shot. You might be out of luck if you don't have a dslr/slr.

It may be Christmas, but it's still Caturday Posted: 25 Dec 2010 05:25 PM PST Above and below, two lovely photographs shared with the Boing Boing Flickr Pool by Katia, a Boing Boing reader in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

Vince Guaraldi Trio: My Little Drum (from "A Charlie Brown Christmas") Posted: 25 Dec 2010 05:09 PM PST Video Link.

Did John Wilkes Booth get away? Posted: 25 Dec 2010 01:07 PM PST On April 26, 1865, Sergeant Boston Corbett shot and killed John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln's assassin who was hiding out in the barn of a tobacco barn in Caroline County, Virginia. Or did he? Some historians have suggested that the man in the barn wasn't Booth, and that he lived for several more decades under assumed names before committing suicide. Now, Booth's descendants have authorized the exhumation of John Wilkes Booth's brother, Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth, to get a DNA sample and close the books on the case. The DNA will be compared with a sample from vertebrae of the man killed in the barn. The body itself is buried but bone samples are in the collection of the National Museum of Medicine and the (incredible) Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. From CNN: "I just feel we have a right to know who's buried there,'' said Lois Trebisacci, 60, who told The Boston Globe she is Edwin Booth's great-great-great granddaughter. In 1995, the family tried to exhume the body inside the family plot that contains the man shot in the barn, but a judge denied the request. "The family was as much interested in disproving [the escape] theory as they were in proving it,'' Mark Zaid, an attorney for Trebisacci, told the Globe... A spokesman told The Inquirer that the National Museum of Health and Medicine was concerned about damage to the precious piece of history, just for the sake of trying to debunk a myth. But Jan Herman, chief historian for the Navy Medical Department and special assistant to the Navy surgeon general in Washington, said since only a small drill would be used, the sample wouldn't be damaged. It's very much a case of weighing what's worth it. "If it compares favorably, that's the end of the controversy," Herman told the Inquirer. "That was Booth in the barn, end of case. "If it doesn't match, you change American history." "Did Abraham Lincoln's assassin get away? DNA could end questions" UPDATE: BB reader Noah Kuttler says, "Brad Meltzer's Decoded" on the History Channel spent an entire episode on this topic last Thursday. The episode is currently available on their website and something I am sure Boing Boing readers would appreciate seeing since it has all the details (and more) on the topic. "Decoded: The Lincoln Assassination" (Also, thanks Jason Weisberger!)

Happy Holidays and New Year's wishes, from David Silverman (The Simpsons) Posted: 25 Dec 2010 10:19 AM PST Each year, Simpsons director David Silverman draws a cool holiday card, and this year, Boing Boing gets first dibs at sharing it with the world. I love it! (The image at top would be the outside of the printed card design, and at bottom, the inside). Thanks, David, and enjoy, everyone! He's on Twitter, by the way.

"This photo was invited and added to the Abandoned Dark Creepy group." Posted: 25 Dec 2010 08:54 AM PST Sure, there are lots of old morgues such as the one Missin' Linx explored and photographed. But how many contain angry doll heads? [Missin Linx's flickr via the submitterator]

Cambridge university refuses to censor student's thesis on chip-and-PIN vulnerabilities Posted: 25 Dec 2010 08:33 AM PST After the UK banking trade association wrote to Cambridge university to have a student's master's thesis censored because it documented a well-known flaw in the chip-and-PIN system, Cambridge's Ross Anderson sent an extremely stiff note in reply: Second, you seem to think that we might censor a student's thesis, which is lawful and already in the public domain, simply because a powerful interest finds it inconvenient. This shows a deep misconception of what universities are and how we work. Cambridge is the University of Erasmus, of Newton, and of Darwin; censoring writings that offend the powerful is offensive to our deepest values. Thus even though the decision to put the thesis online was Omar's, we have no choice but to back him. That would hold even if we did not agree with the material! Accordingly I have authorised the thesis to be issued as a Computer Laboratory Technical Report. This will make it easier for people to find and to cite, and will ensure that its presence on our web site is permanent.... ...Fifth, you say 'Concern was expressed to us by the police that the student was allowed to falsify a transaction in a shop in Cambridge without first warning the merchant'. I fail to understand the basis for this. The banks in France had claimed (as you did) that their systems were secure; a French TV programme wished to discredit this claim (as Newsnight discredited yours); and I understand that Omar did a No-PIN transaction on the card of a French journalist with the journalist's consent and on camera. At no time was there any intent to commit fraud; the journalist's account was debited in due course in accordance with his mandate and the merchant was paid. It is perfectly clear that no transaction was falsified in any material sense. I would not consider such an experiment to require a reference to our ethics committee. By that time the Newsnight programme had appeared and the No-PIN attack was entirely in the public domain. The French television programme was clearly in the public interest, as it made it more difficult for banks in France to defraud their customers by claiming that their systems were secure when they were not. You complain that our work may undermine public confidence in the payments system. What will support public confidence in the payments system is evidence that the banks are frank and honest in admitting its weaknesses when they are exposed, and diligent in effecting the necessary remedies. Your letter shows that, instead, your member banks do their lamentable best to deprecate the work of those outside their cosy club, and indeed to censor it. A Merry Christmas to all Bankers Letter to bankers (PDF) (via /.)   Chip-and-PIN is broken - Boing Boing Chip and PIN terminals pwned - Boing Boing ATM skimmer -- could you spot it in the wild? - Boing Boing Boing Boing: Secure chip-and-PIN terminal hacked to play Tetris Shell UK abandons chip-and-pin after £1M fraud - Boing Boing ATM skimmers: man, these things are scary - Boing Boing

Indecision Points Posted: 25 Dec 2010 08:30 AM PST The London Review of Books checks out President G.W. Bush's memoir, Decision Points: Occasionally, someone on Team DP will insert a lyrical phrase - the tears on the begrimed faces of the 9/11 relief workers 'cutting a path through the soot like rivulets through a desert' - but most of the prose sounds like this: "I told Margaret and Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Bolten that I considered this a far-reaching decision. I laid out a process for making it. I would clarify my guiding principles, listen to experts on all sides of the debate, reach a tentative conclusion, and run it past knowledgeable people. After finalising a decision, I would explain it to the American people. Finally, I would set up a process to ensure that my policy was implemented." There are nearly 500 pages of this... A spot of Foucauldian analysis follows of Team DP, that being the authorial voice in both print and presidency: "There are no decision points in Decision Points... [instead] a space into which the writing subject constantly disappears." 'Damn right,' I said [LRB via Metafilter]

Using tape to make wireframe sculptures Posted: 25 Dec 2010 08:12 AM PST Aaron Finnis's installations look like transparent glass or plastic, but are in fact wireframes made with tape. What's on the tape? Recordings of numbers stations. And Def Leppard. [Triangulation via Illusion 360]

Village Voice's worst songs of 2010 Posted: 25 Dec 2010 08:06 AM PST The worst songs of 2010. If you like Hey, Soul Sister, you will not like this list.

Tennessee anti-terrorism officials put ACLU on map of "terrorism events and other suspicious activity" Posted: 25 Dec 2010 07:25 AM PST Ho ho ho: Tennessee anti-terrorist official gave the ACLU of Tennessee a hell of a Christmas present: according to them, the ACLU belongs on a map of terrorism events and other suspicious activity: "Equating a group's attempts to protect religious freedom in Tennessee with suspicious activity related to terrorism is outrageous. Religious freedom is a founding principle in our Constitution -- not fodder for overzealous law enforcement."

London's sewermen say: bin your fat, don't flush it Posted: 25 Dec 2010 05:48 AM PST These festive London sewermen would like you to remember to throw away your cooking fat rather than running it down the drains, lest it form sclerotic poo-streaked fatty cake that chokes the city's vast cloacae. "It's not every day you get to see a rough-and-ready performance of a Christmas carol by a bunch of guys knee deep in poo." Singing Sewermen - Thames Water   Mountains of putrid fat scraped off the sewer-walls beneath ... Nighttime sewer-workers in London - Boing Boing Secret London: guide to the weird and wonderful secrets of London ...

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