The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- Disgraced security firm asked Bank of America to fund anti-Wikileaks/anti-Glen Greenwald campaign
- Floppy drive organ plays toccata
- Death and Taxes, the state budget edition: Massachussetts
- Black Metal Greeting Cards
- Mike Mignola talks setting and architecture
- Indigenous Brazilians fight Amazon dam project (big photo gallery)
- Playmobil Stop Motion Joy Division
- Float: ultralight rubber-band-powered duration model planes
- 99% Invisible: podcast on the power of design
- HP TouchPad enters fray
- My essential Mac applications
- Braised Cthulhu: tentacled tummy-tickler
- Orabrush tongue scraper
- How tough is it to build a dirty bomb?
- Up-themed engagement-ring box
- Chris Ware's poster for Uncle Boonmee
- Model rocket launches when fish bites the hook
- Daladubz puts Dumbo to dubstep
- Encode location data in the surface of manhole covers, help robots find their way
- Why kids call homeless people hobos
- Is it legal to print Settlers of Catan tiles on a 3D printer?
- Star Wars retold in witty, clever icons
- TOM THE DANCING BUG: The Education of Louis
- NYC subway rider with rat and spaghetti
- Creepy head mask to punish "rude, clamorous" women from 1550 to 1800
- Cool illustrations from a 1964 book about Jules Verne
- Nerdcore Now: new nerdcore sampler
- Further proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy
- Why Wikipedia needs women
- Women "computers" of World War II
| Disgraced security firm asked Bank of America to fund anti-Wikileaks/anti-Glen Greenwald campaign Posted: 09 Feb 2011 11:34 PM PST  Last week, hackers operating under the Anonymous banner broken into servers for HBGary, a security firm whose COO, Aaron Barr had declared his intention to reveal the identities of key people operating as Anonymous. The hackers released 50,000-some emails from HBGary, including a series of slides presented to Bank of America by HBGary and two other security firms, Palantir Technologies and Berico Technologies. The slide presentation proposes a series of dirty tricks to neutralize Wikileaks and its supporters, including targetted attacks on Salon's Glen Greenwald, as well as infrastructure attacks, disinformation campaigns, and sabotage. There's no indication that Bank of America signed off on this plan. Data intelligence firms proposed a systematic attack against WikiLeaks
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| Floppy drive organ plays toccata Posted: 10 Feb 2011 01:24 AM PST YouTube user FunToTheHead has created a working organ that uses finely tuned wheezing floppy drives to play rather impressive renditions of music. It's not easy to sequence for four-note floppy-drive organs, but FunToTheHead has done a rather good job with Toccata and Fugue -- a solid choice for any mad-science organ! I love that he's got the blinkenlights synched with the music. People have made floppy drives sing before, but this is my personal take on it.Phantom of the Floppera So I built a musical instrument out of antiquated PC hardware... (Reddit) (Thanks, Evan!)
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| Death and Taxes, the state budget edition: Massachussetts Posted: 09 Feb 2011 10:45 PM PST  Jess Bachman, designer of the incredibly detailed Death and Taxes graphic that shows how the US government spends American taxpayers' money, has produced a state level budget visualization for Massachussetts. "I did this one on commission and it has as much detail as the original Death and Taxes," he explains. The most largest and most detailed visualization of a state budget ever, this 864 square inch poster (not for sale) compares hundreds of programs and expenditures from the billions down to the thousands of dollars. If you really want to see how a state (like Massachusetts) spends its taxpayers' money, this is it.
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| Posted: 09 Feb 2011 10:10 PM PST  (inside captions, left image: "If I had a heart I'd give it to you." Right image: "Another step closer to the grave") My hunt for the perfect greeting cards has come to a triumphant end. Dark & Somber Greeting (Etsy shop) is pretty much everything I could have ever hoped for. Valentines and Birthday cards shown above. |
| Mike Mignola talks setting and architecture Posted: 08 Feb 2011 11:26 PM PST Geoff from BLDGBlog sez, "I just uploaded a long interview with Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy, B.P.R.D., Baltimore, and much else besides. The conversation mostly sticks to questions of setting -- of architecture and landscape -- because of the nature of my blog, but this gives Mignola an opportunity to talk about the spaces and terrains in which his plots and stories take place. So we talk about landscapes of horror and mythology, as I describe it: from H.P. Lovecraft to old shipwrecks, giant octopi to abandoned houses, coastal marshes to mansions in the Alps. And there are monkeys..." Ruin, Space, and Shadow: An Interview with Mike Mignola (Thanks, Geoff!) |
| Indigenous Brazilians fight Amazon dam project (big photo gallery) Posted: 09 Feb 2011 04:46 PM PST  Native Brazilians from the Amazon basin demonstrate against the construction of the planned Belo Monte hydroelectric dam, in Brasilia February 8, 2011. Proposed to be built along the Xingu River in the state of Para, the dam would be the world's third largest at planned capacity, though environmentalists and native Brazilians have raised concerns that the project may displace indigenous tribes and damage the environment. Here is a recap of the issue on Global Voices, and below, more photographs from the protest this week. (photos: REUTERS/Ueslei Marcelino)
The sign above reads, "No Belo Monte dam on the Xingu."
Brazilian indigenous people protest outside Brazil's electric energy agency Aneel in Brasilia April 20, 2010, against the construction of the Belo Monte Hydroelectric power plant in the Xingu River. Aneel suspended the auction of the 11,000 megawatt Belo Monte hydroelectric dam that was scheduled for midday (1500 GMT) on Tuesday because of an injunction filed by a public prosecutor in a federal court, ordering it to suspend the auction. Aneel is prepared to go ahead even if the injunction is overturned just minutes before the established time for the auction of the high profile hydroelectric project.
A Greenpeace member protests outside Brazil's electric energy agency Aneel in Brasilia April 20, 2010, against the construction of the Belo Monte Hydroelectric power plant in the Xingu River. |
| Playmobil Stop Motion Joy Division Posted: 09 Feb 2011 04:48 PM PST That's right. Joy Division's "Transmission" as performed by Playmobil toys in stop motion. It's right in all the wrong ways. [Video Link] |
| Float: ultralight rubber-band-powered duration model planes Posted: 09 Feb 2011 04:16 PM PST Float Documentary Trailer from Phil Kibbe on Vimeo. These beautiful dragonfly-like model planes can float for up to half an hour under the power of one single-wound rubber band. Check out the trailer for Float posted by Phil Kibbe. Amazing craftsmanship and techniques! Video link. (via devour.com) |
| 99% Invisible: podcast on the power of design Posted: 09 Feb 2011 04:01 PM PST 
Jesse Thorn writes in with word of a cool podcast I hadn't checked out before, "99% Invisible"— Roman Mars is a very accomplished and well-regarded public radio producer based in the Bay Area. He just started the second season of his show 99% Invisible. Each episode is a beautiful, rich look at one tiny corner of our lives through the lens of design. The first episode of the season is about the periodic table. One of my favorites from the first season was about flag design. The show is free in iTunes. Roman was a scientist before he got involved in public radio, and his show combines precision, depth and aesthetics in a really lovely way. |
| Posted: 09 Feb 2011 01:53 PM PST  The fruits of HP and Palm's merger are finally coming, in the form of the HP TouchPad and two new touchscreen cellphones. Out until later this year, the TouchPad has the same-size screen as an iPad (at the same 1024x768 resolution, too) and runs a new version of WebOS, the mobile operating system Palm developed to compete with Apple's iOS. It has a 1.2GHz dual core processor, a 1.3MP camera, and a similar look to its competitors. Engadget has video of it in action. Also announced today was a new version of the Pre cellphone, now with a larger, 3.6" display, and the HP Veer, a remarkably small "pebble" smartphone that weighs just 103 grams. [Gizmodo] There was an interesting surprise at HP's press conference, too: WebOS will also be made available for PCs. [Crunchgear] |
| Posted: 09 Feb 2011 01:38 PM PST I recently got a new iMac (the 27-inch model) and instead of copying over the SuperDuper backup from my previous computer, I decided to add applications as I needed them. (I took the advice of Leo Laporte, who once said that when he buys a new computer, the applications have to "earn their place" onto the hard drive). On the first day, I installed about 30 applications that I consider essential for the kinds of things I do. Below are the first five applications I installed, in the order in which I installed them. If this post proves to be of interest, I will write about the other 25 applications I installed that day, in a series of subsequent posts. Note: This is mainly about Macintosh software but some of the applications and utilities I describe below are available for Windows and Linux. (If you aren't interested and you are reading this from the front page of Boing Boing, press the J-key.)
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| Braised Cthulhu: tentacled tummy-tickler Posted: 09 Feb 2011 12:19 AM PST  Ben Tripp's "Braised Cthulhu" is a lemongrass-scented culinary elder god mashup. Braised Cthulu (Thanks, Ben!) |
| Posted: 09 Feb 2011 01:31 PM PST Orabrush makes an inexpensive modern take on the classic tongue-scraper, bristling with rubber fronds that "reach deep into the uneven crevices of your tongue." Alternative uses: muffin tenderizer; cat de-dandruffer; scoring paddle for kinky lawn bowlers. Also, best PR pitch so far this year. [Orabrush] |
| How tough is it to build a dirty bomb? Posted: 09 Feb 2011 01:09 PM PST [YouTube Link] On PBS NewsHour, Miles O'Brien reports on the threat that radioactive "dirty bombs" could pose to cities in the U.S., and what's being done to prevent a radiological attack from happening. Boing Boing readers may find this segment of particular interest because it features two unique characters familiar to our community of happy mutants. First, David Hahn. Miles explains: Hahn is the man who earned the sobriquet "The Radioactive Boy Scout" in 1995 when he came very close to building a breeder nuclear reactor in his backyard in suburban Detroit. I am serious as a meltdown.There's a book about Hahn here  , and a Harper's article here. The NewsHour piece also includes Bob Lazar, the guy behind United Nuclear. BB pal Steve Silberman's epic profile of Lazar and his DIY science business is here, and I can't even count how many times we've blogged about Lazar's aerogel chunks and Neodymium "supermagnets." Watch "How Tough Is it to Build a Dirty Bomb?" video on YouTube, read the transcript here, or download an MP3 of the audio here. Miles is on Twitter here, and so is PBS NewsHour. A two-way chat between Miles and PBS NewsHour's web host, Hari Sreenivasan is embedded below—more backstory on how DIY science, anti-terror, and dirty bombs intersect, and how to separate the FUD from fact. And a related blog post from the reporter is here.
[YouTube Link: "If a Boy Scout Can Get Nuclear Materials, What's Stopping Terrorists?"] [ Image, via Wikipedia: "The mushroom cloud of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945 rose some 18 kilometers (11 miles) above the bomb's hypocenter." The so-called dirty bombs discussed in this story are incapable of this sort of destructive force; rather, their threat lies more in the disruptive, contaminating, and terrifying effect possible in concentrated urban areas. ] |
| Posted: 08 Feb 2011 11:31 PM PST  Paul Pape created an Up! themed engagement-ring box as a commission and liked the results so much he's doing ten more and putting them on Etsy: "The piece was originally made from plasticized cardstock and then molded and cast from plastic resin and hand-painted by me. Since the whole piece is molded, I will be doing a limited run of ten ring boxes and putting them up on Ebay on March 1st. This is my annual charity fundraiser, in which I will donate a percentage (40%) to a charity of my choosing. Normally I choose Child's Play, and excellent charity that provides games for children in hospitals, but this time around I think Habitat for Humanity is more theme appropriate." UP and away! (via Super Punch) |
| Chris Ware's poster for Uncle Boonmee Posted: 09 Feb 2011 12:12 PM PST  New York magazine's Vulture has the scoop on Chris Ware's fantastic poster for the movie Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives: When cartoonist hero Chris Ware (Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth) was asked to create the poster for Palme d'Or winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, he knew it would be a challenge -- and not just because Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Thai ghost story famously features a scene of princess-on-catfish coitus. "I wanted to get at both the transcendent solemnity of the film while keeping some sense of its loose, very unpretentious accessibility," says Ware.Vulture Premieres the Poster for Cannes Hit Uncle Boonmee, Designed by Chris Ware |
| Model rocket launches when fish bites the hook Posted: 09 Feb 2011 11:58 AM PST Mayor Mike says: This week, I outfitted my ice fishing sledge with a rattle-reel, a super-sketchy homebrew detonator (the trigger involves a guitar pick) and a launch pad. Now, I know when a fish bites because a rocket launches.My Rocket-Wielding Blast-Off Ice Fishing Tip-Up |
| Daladubz puts Dumbo to dubstep Posted: 09 Feb 2011 11:55 AM PST Daladubz - Pink elephants VIP by Daladubz Here's a dirty little dubstep track to brighten your day. Daladubz took a few samples from the classic Disney film Dumbo and gave it some bass and a bit more modern flavor. The mix is perfect. Enjoy that drop! |
| Encode location data in the surface of manhole covers, help robots find their way Posted: 09 Feb 2011 12:16 AM PST In "Shape Recognition of Metallic Landmark and its Application to Self-Position Estimation for Mobile Robot," (a paper in Journal of Robotics and Mechatronics,) Tokyo robotics researchers Hajime Fujii, Yoshinobu Ando, Takashi Yoshimi, and Makoto Mizukawa, propose to encode location information in the shape of the surface of manhole covers as a source of location data for confused robots: I, for one, welcome our manhole-seeking overlords (via Beyond the Beyond) (Image: Manhole cover, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from framesofmind's photostream) |
| Why kids call homeless people hobos Posted: 09 Feb 2011 10:23 AM PST Above is an episode of Kids React to Viral Videos in which some of the kids refer to the formerly-homeless "golden throated" Ted Williams a hobo. My two daughters and all their friends refer to homeless people as hobos, too. I have tried to explain that homeless people aren't generally hobos, but for some reason this word seems have stuck with kids. I never asked them where they first came up with the idea that homeless people are hobos, but it could be that they picked it up from a TV show for kids called iCarly. Or then again, the writers of iCarly may have picked it up from hearing kids say it. (Personally, I blame Hodgman and Apelad.) Sociological Images has more: Since one girl attributed her use of "hobo" to the TV show iCarly, Josh did a little searching and discovered that the show's official website contains a set of photos of the cast dressed up for a Hobo Party, complete with captions that make fun of or trivialize poverty and homelessness, including this first one that refers to the store "C.J. Penniless."Trivializing homelessness: iCarly and "hobo parties" |
| Is it legal to print Settlers of Catan tiles on a 3D printer? Posted: 09 Feb 2011 12:10 AM PST  When a Thingiverse contributor uploaded 3D-print-ready homebrew tiles for German superboardgame Settlers of Catan, it raised a bunch of interesting legal questions. Is it illegal to make your own Settlers tiles? To download 3D files describing these tiles? To host the files? To print the files? Now, Public Knowledge provides some legal analysis: Let's start with copyright. Settlers of Catan is probably protected by copyright. Importantly, that protection does not cover the entirety of the game. Instead, copyright protects the design on the game tiles. This makes sense - the image on the tile (of pastures, or fields, or rocky quarries, or the like) is just a picture, and pictures are well within the scope of copyright. However, Sublime's 3D designs make no attempt to copy the images on the tiles. Copyright might also protect the shapes of the pieces, except these shapes are so generic and utilitarian (rectangles for roads, simple houses for settlements) that any protection would be extremely limited. Moreover, Sublime's pieces are generally more ornate that the official versions.PK's Michael Weinberg (author of the excellent white paper It Will Be Awesome if They Don't Screw it Up: 3D Printing, Intellectual Property, and the Fight Over the Next Great Disruptive Technology) goes on to analyze the patent and trademark implications, and concludes that it's almost certainly legal to make, host, design, download and print your own Settlers tiles. 3D Printing Settlers of Catan is Probably Not Illegal: Is This a Problem? (via Futurismic)
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| Star Wars retold in witty, clever icons Posted: 09 Feb 2011 10:01 AM PST  Cinemajay sez, "UK-based 'Imperial Web Designer' Wayne Dorrington created this awesome re-telling of Star Wars using only icons. Lines #6 and #25 are exactly the kind of sublime nerdboy humor I appreciate." Iconoscope No.1: Star Wars Episode IV (Thanks, Cinemajay!) |
| TOM THE DANCING BUG: The Education of Louis Posted: 09 Feb 2011 12:34 PM PST
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| NYC subway rider with rat and spaghetti Posted: 09 Feb 2011 12:20 AM PST This video highlights the colorful experiences to be had as a NYC subway commuter: in this case, it's an eccentric gentleman who rambles incoherently while eating spaghetti and petting a tame rat on his lap. Rat on New York City Subway. 2 (via Digg)
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| Creepy head mask to punish "rude, clamorous" women from 1550 to 1800 Posted: 09 Feb 2011 10:01 AM PST  When Glenn Beck pines for the good old days, this is probably the kind of thing he's talking about. This item is one of the more disturbing objects in Henry Wellcome's collection. A 'Scold's bridle' is a fearsome looking mask which fits tightly on to the head. A scold was defined as a "rude, clamorous woman". The bridle was used as a punishment for women considered to be spending too much time gossiping or quarrelling. Time spent in the bridle was normally allocated as a punishment by a local magistrate. The custom developed in Britain in the 1500s, and spread to some other European countries, including Germany. When wearing the mask it was impossible to speak. This example has a bell on top to draw even more attention to the wearer, increasing their humiliation. It was used until the early 1800s as a punishment in workhouses.Scold's bridle, Germany, 1550-1800 (Via Neatorama) |
| Cool illustrations from a 1964 book about Jules Verne Posted: 09 Feb 2011 09:45 AM PST  Designer and Illustrator Ward Jenkins came across Peter P. Plasencia's illustrations for a 1964 book called Jules Verne: The Man Who Invented the Future by Franz Born. He writes: A great book, with even greater illustrations by Peter P. Plasencia, who, as you may recall, illustrated the wonderful Space Alphabet book. I love seeing how Peter utilized the gouache to create various depths of field by the use of the subtle shades of grey. All the while, flattening the space within the composition. Superb work. Love it.Images from Jules Verne: The Man Who Invented the Future |
| Nerdcore Now: new nerdcore sampler Posted: 08 Feb 2011 11:47 PM PST  Nerdcore Now: Volume 1 is a great, free sampler of nerdcore music from the Nerdcore Now community: "Featuring brand new unreleased tracks from artists such as Beefy, Supercommuter, Adam Warrock, Random aka Mega Ran, Death*Star, Torrentz and so many more! Songs on this compilation cover topics related to video games, nerd life braggadocio, teleportation, X-Men, Pokemon, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and so much more!" 01 - Beefy - Nerdcore NowNerdcore Now Volume 1 - Download Now! (via Underwire)
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| Further proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy Posted: 09 Feb 2011 08:15 AM PST Scientific American tackles a very important topic: The physics and chemistry that explain why beer-battered fried things are more delicious than regular fried things. |
| Posted: 09 Feb 2011 07:45 AM PST Why does Wikipedia need more female contributors? Example A: The entry on Women In Science From World War II to the Present. No, seriously. There have been more than six. I swear. And not just in the United States and Britain. |
| Women "computers" of World War II Posted: 09 Feb 2011 07:35 AM PST Before it came to mean laptops, PCs, or even room-sized machines, "computer" was what you called a person who did mathematical calculations for a living. That job was vitally important during World War II. And, like many vital jobs on the homefront, it was turned over to women, so that men could be sent into battle. After Pearl Harbor, the military recruited women to be computers, calculating things like ballistics trajectories in top-secret enclaves at the University of Pennsylvania and the Monroe Army Base in California. At the time, there weren't a lot of women with college-level mathematics degrees, and so the calculators included women working on accounting degrees, and even talented high-schoolers. Some of the women chosen to be human computers went on to become the first programmers of the machine-computer ENIAC.
The CNN story this excerpt comes from feels like it's missing some key details. But there's also a documentary on the women—called Top-Secret Rosies. I've only seen the preview video that's embedded above, but it sounds fascinating—and more than a little heartbreaking. Thanks to datakid23 for tipping me off to the post about this on Slashdot! |
If I'm doing Victorian London, I'm not trying to do that story for a scholar of Victorian London. In a way, I say that this is more like a 1940s film version of London--in other words, I want to do at least the level of research that you'd see in an old Hollywood film. So I've given myself a little distance from reality with that. 
Above, a protester eats ice cream.
The sign with a portrait of President Dilma Rousseff reads, "Stop Belo Monte." 
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So say Hajime Fujii and colleagues from Shibaura Institute of Technology in Tokyo, who have worked out that manhole covers are amongst the more permanent of objects in our built environment. And better still, they point out, they are made of metal - and so are easily detectable by a simple metal detecting scanner. 
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