The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- American oligarch buys the right to hire professors at Florida State U
- DoubleTap: share music between Android phones by tapping them together
- Dan Bull's Stupid Injunction: rap about the UK's sexy, censoring super injunctions
- Facebook apps leaked users' personal data to advertisers, other third parties, for years
- The promise of Google Music
- Google prepares for possible $500 million settlement with DoJ over online ads, according to SEC filing
- Trump slumps
- Every WB Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoon ever made, from 1930-1969 (video)
- Dark Tourism: bummer trips, by design
- Beware MAC Defender: OSX malware disguised as anti-virus software
- Buy your very own Minecraft grass cube
- Interview with author of Wicked Bugs
- Tourist photos from pre-Revolutionary Moscow
- Animatronic wonders of John Nolan
- Best college sex ed class ever canceled after sex toy demonstration with naked lady
- GameSave: hackathon to design emergency-relief games
- URGENT: Intellectual Property Consortium wants .net domains to be subject to TRADEMARK seizures and to abolish privacy-shielded .NETs
- Fresh outrage at doll that lets little girls 'breastfeed'
- Centrifugal force 101: "Hamster Too Fast Wipeout"
- Great computers for less than £100
- HOWTO sue telemarketers and keep the stuff they send you without paying for it
- Nina Paley's Kickstarter project for copyfighting comic tracts
- Improv Everywhere at GEL conference
- Beat monopoly prices on one-airline cities with the "phantom city" trick
- Tornado deaths and tornado frequency do not coincide
- Did you hear the one about the Higgs boson?
- ReachOut Reads: YA fiction to comfort and inspire kids coping with mental health issues
- Allergies explained using cookies and candy
- Fukushima: Nuclear chain reactions may have temporarily restarted 12 days after earthquake
- Paying For It: a Comic-Strip Memoir About Being a John, by Chester Brown
| American oligarch buys the right to hire professors at Florida State U Posted: 11 May 2011 02:49 AM PDT Florida State University has sold Charles G. Koch the right to decide who they can hire to fill two economics slots at the public university, for the low sum of $1.5 million. Koch (one of the Koch brothers, the billionaires who funded the Tea Party and the campaigns of anti-union governors in the midwest) "donated" the amount through his Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, with strings attached: he got to appoint an advisory committee that would be in charge of choosing the professors who would be funded through his grant. He also gets to set "targets" for these professors, and can withdraw his money if they're not met. David W. Rasmussen, dean of the College of Social Sciences, defended the deal, initiated by an FSU graduate working for Koch. During the first round of hiring in 2009, Koch rejected nearly 60 percent of the faculty's suggestions but ultimately agreed on two candidates. Although the deal was signed in 2008 with little public controversy, the issue revived last week when two FSU professors -- one retired, one active -- criticized the contract in the Tallahassee Democrat as an affront to academic freedom.Billionaire's role in hiring decisions at Florida State University raises questions (via MeFi) | |||
| DoubleTap: share music between Android phones by tapping them together Posted: 11 May 2011 02:53 AM PDT Jon "DVD Jon" Johansen sez, "At Google I/O today we launched doubleTap, an update to the doubleTwist Android app that adds proximity-based sharing for NFC-enabled Android devices such as the Google Nexus S. With doubleTap users can transfer a video or a song simply by tapping two devices together. NFC (Near Field Communication) is used to initiate the sharing and then the actual file transfer happens over WiFi or Bluetooth. We are demoing this powerful feature at our stand at I/O using some great Creative Commons licensed tracks from ccMixter. In this app update, we also brought AirPlay support to Android so now you can stream to your Apple TV from non-Apple devices!" Spotlight: doubleTwist's doubleTap (Thanks, Jon!) | |||
| Dan Bull's Stupid Injunction: rap about the UK's sexy, censoring super injunctions Posted: 10 May 2011 10:46 PM PDT Copyfighting rapper Dan Bull's latest track is "Stupid Injunction," a song inspired by the UK's "super injunctions," a process by which wealthy individuals and large companies can get court orders forbidding the disclosure of embarrassing facts about their lives, and forbidding any mention of the injunction's existence at all. The InjunctionSuper Twitter account purports to publish details of the Super Injunctions, most of which involve affairs, exotic sexual activities with prostitutes and sexual harrassment. The new Bull song coincides with his latest business model: commissioned songs. He writes, "I was thinking about how musicians made money before the record industry came about, and with that in mind I've gone back to the patronage days of old and put myself on eBay. The opening bid was 1p and it's risen phenomenally over the past couple of days. More proof that artists don't need the 'protection' of IP law..." | |||
| Facebook apps leaked users' personal data to advertisers, other third parties, for years Posted: 10 May 2011 08:27 PM PDT  A Facebook security hole allowed advertisers and other third parties to access user accounts and personal data, according to a blog post today from internet security firm Symantec. They identify the exposure as having been active for as long as Facebook has offered applications on its platform, beginning in 2007— so, four years. That unintended access included "profiles, photographs, chat, and the ability to post messages and mine personal information," wrote Symantec's Nishant Doshi, who is credited with finding the issue along with colleague Candid Wueest. "Fortunately, these third-parties may not have realized their ability to access this information."
Facebook today said the problem has been fixed, and there is no evidence that any actual private data was leaked. More from the Symantec post: Symantec has discovered that in certain cases, Facebook IFRAME applications inadvertently leaked access tokens to third parties like advertisers or analytic platforms. We estimate that as of April 2011, close to 100,000 applications were enabling this leakage. We estimate that over the years, hundreds of thousands of applications may have inadvertently leaked millions of access tokens to third parties.More: Here is the Wall Street Journal story, and CNET has a related report here.
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| Posted: 10 May 2011 07:30 PM PDT Gizmodo's Mat Honan on Google's just-announced music service: "Essentially, you're taking the island of music on your computer and dropping it in the cloud. But it's still an island. It's still a self-contained unit. You have to manage it yourself. It won't grow unless you manually add tracks to it. There's no serendipitous discovery. No social component. No Pandora or Last.fm-style suggestions that drop tracks you've never heard before, but already love. Google isn't offering you a vast, new catalog. It's just offering to hold your shit for you." | |||
| Posted: 10 May 2011 06:43 PM PDT IT World: "Google is revising down its first-quarter earnings to reflect a possible $500 million settlement with the U.S. Justice Department over online advertising issues," according to this 10-Q filed today with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The figure represents 22% of Google's bottom line. | |||
| Posted: 10 May 2011 07:05 PM PDT | |||
| Every WB Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoon ever made, from 1930-1969 (video) Posted: 10 May 2011 06:10 PM PDT Video Link. Fleeting images, one frame each, of every Warner Brothers cartoon made between 1930 and 1969, set to the tune of "the cartoon's most famous closing theme performed by various artists including The Three Stooges." (via David Silverman) | |||
| Dark Tourism: bummer trips, by design Posted: 10 May 2011 05:42 PM PDT Vagabondish on "Dark tourism," described as the act of travel and visitation to sites, attractions and exhibitions which have real or recreated death, suffering or the seemingly macabre as a main theme." (via Bruce Sterling) | |||
| Beware MAC Defender: OSX malware disguised as anti-virus software Posted: 10 May 2011 04:59 PM PDT  A new piece of malware is spreading, notable because it targets computers running Mac OS X, rather than Windows. Reports of the trojan "MAC Defender" (aka Mac Protector, aka Mac Security) first surfaced on May 2, but the malware has since morphed and proliferated. The basics: it spreads as search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning, using popular search terms for prominent search engine results. More: PC World, MacWorld, Ars Technica, Fortune, and a full description updated today at SecureMac.com. And if you are a Mac user, now is as good a time as any to consider installing *actual* anti-virus and malware scan apps. Intego's VirusBarrier, Sophos and MacScan are several with free demo versions. Apparently, "osama bin laden" is one of the popular search terms used to deploy. I just encountered a MAC Defender come-on page in Safari after clicking on a poisoned msnbc.com link via Twitter, hence the inspiration for this blog post. Pretty sure one of the remnant ads on msnbc.com served it. The serving IP is below, load it at your own risk, I paste it for informational purposes only. http://178.17.162.163/7d81dd5ca78c961d206fb04f2f1709c2fbc6f0515ca0adda | |||
| Buy your very own Minecraft grass cube Posted: 10 May 2011 04:04 PM PDT  Our technobabbleist, Dean, was informed by Dannel Jurado about an interesting item on sale at Etsy. It is a 2.5" cube designed to resemble a cubic meter of earth from the computer game Minecraft. The seller, Laketide, will construct as many as you please, for $10 each. | |||
| Interview with author of Wicked Bugs Posted: 10 May 2011 01:42 PM PDT [Video Link] I interviewed Amy Stewart, author of Wicked Plants and the new Wicked Bugs. She told me about the most dangerous bug, the most disgusting bug, the most fascinating bug, and so on. We also talked about people who grow gardens filled with "wicked plants," and people who grow opium poppies and coca plants. She's such an interesting and cool person! | |||
| Tourist photos from pre-Revolutionary Moscow Posted: 10 May 2011 12:46 AM PDT  Bryn sez, "My cousin recently put some previously unpublished photos of his great grandfather's trip to Moscow in 1909 on Flickr and folks in Moscow found them and they went viral. The Moscow Times just did an article on them: 'His photographs of pedestrians, street venders and aristocrats are rare glimpses of everyday life before the upheavals of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution -- and sparked huge interest in Russia among history buffs and local museums. The photographs re-emerged a few months ago when Howe's great-grandson, Andrew Howe V of Atlantic Beach, Florida, posted about 75 of them on his Flickr account.'" Old Moscow Photos Reappear (Thanks, Bryn!) | |||
| Animatronic wonders of John Nolan Posted: 09 May 2011 11:37 PM PDT John Nolan is a special effects roboticist who creates stunning animatronic effects for film and elsewhere. His showreel, above, is a mesmerizing tour of the uncanny valley where he dwells. Amazing Animatronics by John Nolan (Thanks, Quinn!) | |||
| Best college sex ed class ever canceled after sex toy demonstration with naked lady Posted: 10 May 2011 01:29 PM PDT  Northwestern University has canceled the rest of Prof. John Michael Bailey's popular Human Sexuality course and placed the teacher under investigation following a scandal over an after-class, optional sex toy demonstration in February. The toy involved was an "adult power tool" called a Fucksaw (NSFW link) and was demonstrated with a live naked lady and her boyfriend, neither of whom were students at the college.Bailey's course will not be offered during the next academic year, said Northwestern U spokesman Al Cubbage on Monday. Bailey has also apologized. From Fox Chicago: According to guest lecturer Ken Melvoin-Berg, after the students were told that a couple would take part in a demonstration involving a sex toy, the students were warned about a half dozen times that "what was about to happen would be graphic."Ken Melvoin-Berg narrated what was happening for the class. He operates the "Weird Chicago Red Light District Sex Tour."
The Daily Northwestern quoted Bailey as saying,"Sticks and stones may break your bones, but watching naked people on stage doing pleasurable things will never hurt you."More: Daily Northwestern, Chicago Sun-Times, Fox Chicago, Chicago Tribune, Reuters. | |||
| GameSave: hackathon to design emergency-relief games Posted: 09 May 2011 11:34 PM PDT A group of disaster relief specialists and game designers have created GameSave, a hackathon in Seattle to design games to teach people the fundamentals of emergency relief: Platform to Playform: A Game Layer over Digital Activism (Thanks, Jake!) | |||
| Posted: 10 May 2011 09:50 PM PDT The Intellectual Property Constituency has asked that, as a condition of Verisign's ongoing management of the .NET top-level domain, that they should be required to act as private Urgent: Now Intellectual Property Group Wants to Apply New Rights Protections to .Net Update: I've just filed comments on behalf of Boing Boing. A copy is here. | |||
| Fresh outrage at doll that lets little girls 'breastfeed' Posted: 10 May 2011 12:01 PM PDT  A doll that lets little girls pretend they are breastfeeding is the hot thing in toys this year, provoking outrage among those to whom breastfeeding means boobs means sexy. My favorite complaint is a column at Yahoo! Contributor Network that reads a little like it blew in from Yahoo! Answers: [That it might] "stimulate their imagination" are what concern me. The breast milk baby will more than likely result in questions from young girls to their mothers and/or fathers asking why a baby feeds from her breastI plan to buy one and nurse it calmly in Wal-Mart. If you're feeling a sense of deja vu, it's because there was a similar wave of media-led anger when the toy was first released in Europe a few years ago. That time, columnist Eric Ruhalter apologized to nursing advocates after comparing the idea of it to having kids act out alcoholism, erectile disfunction and prison rape. Bebe Gloton Breastfeeding Doll  [Amazon] | |||
| Centrifugal force 101: "Hamster Too Fast Wipeout" Posted: 10 May 2011 11:10 AM PDT
Video link to view it large. You're welcome. Not unlike the OK Go video, actually. (Musical selection by @mustardhamsters) | |||
| Great computers for less than £100 Posted: 10 May 2011 10:36 AM PDT Andrew Orlowski offers five amazing computers for under £100. I love that Psion 3MX, but easier to find in the U.S. might be a HP Jornada or something similar by Sharp. [The Register] | |||
| HOWTO sue telemarketers and keep the stuff they send you without paying for it Posted: 09 May 2011 11:00 PM PDT If you follow an exacting script and keep careful records, you can apparently sue sloppy telemarketers (or their clients) for $500 each, and get free merchandise in the bargain. America's telemarketing laws seem tough on marketers, but they're structured in such a way as to make the process as difficult as possible for people who don't want to get phonespam. But if you are careful, you can get $500 every time a telemarketer calls you twice after being told to add you to its do-not-call list. They get to call you once without incurring this penalty, but apparently, you get to keep anything you order on the second call for free without paying for it, since "future calls will be a violation of an act of the U.S. Congress, any contract directly resulting from an illegal act is not enforceable. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) offers no 'grace period.'" I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know if the author of the article is. It's presented in Comic Sans, so caveat emptor and all that. May I have your company's name, address and telephone number? If you are calling on behalf of a client, may I have the name, address and telephone number of your company, as well as the name, address and telephone number of the company that you are calling on behalf of?Telemarketing Script (via Consumerist) | |||
| Nina Paley's Kickstarter project for copyfighting comic tracts Posted: 09 May 2011 10:38 PM PDT Copyfighting cartoonist Nina Paley is raising money on Kickstarter to pay for a print-run of copyright abolition tracts expanding on on Misinformation Wants to Be Free, her print-on-demand Mimi and Eunice book. She's hoping that with a prepaid print-run, she can get the price of the tracts way down. Unfortunately those print-on-demand prototypes cost $7 each to make. But by printing a large run on a regular press, the cost of each minibook drops to $3 or less (this is my cost, not retail). I should be able to get the per-book cost significantly lower (between $1 and $2), but I'm estimating $3 here to be cautious. The $3,000 is to pay for such a run. I will print as many mini-books as I can for $3,000 (or whatever I raise). The more booklets I can afford to print, the cheaper each booklet will be. Ideally each one will be so cheap they'll be affordable to give away, or leave in laundromats and libraries a la Jack Chick tracts.Mimi & Eunice's Intellectual Pooperty minibooks (via Command Line) | |||
| Improv Everywhere at GEL conference Posted: 10 May 2011 09:19 AM PDT [Video Link] Charlie Todd says: "For our latest mission, a musical breaks out at the GEL Conference in New York. A speaker is suddenly interrupted by a man who refuses to turn off his cell phone." | |||
| Beat monopoly prices on one-airline cities with the "phantom city" trick Posted: 09 May 2011 10:53 PM PDT  When a US city's airport is controlled by a single airline, that city becomes disproportionately expensive to fly into -- the airline has no competition. But you can often get a bargain by booking a ticket that has a layover in that city and then abandoning the second leg of your trip. For example, to fly from Des Moines to Dallas costs $375; flying Des Moines to LA via Dallas costs $186 -- all you need to do is get off the plane in Dallas with your carryon-only bag. Airlines' terms of service prohibit this, but their only remedy if you get caught is to bar you from flying with them anymore. 1. Look to employ the switcheroo when your final destination is at a hub airport dominated by just one or two carriers, like Atlanta, Cleveland, Salt Lake City, Charlotte, Detroit, Cincinnati or Chicago O'Hare, all of which have overpriced tickets.How to Beat High Airfares (via Consumerist) (Image: Copy of Airplane Ticket, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from tedkerwin's photostream) | |||
| Tornado deaths and tornado frequency do not coincide Posted: 10 May 2011 08:48 AM PDT  Tornadoes are most frequent in central Oklahoma. But more tornado deaths occur around the region where the borders of Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi touch. This graphic comes from a really interesting article by Chris Rowan on the Highly Allochthonous blog. Rowan compares the disparities between tornado frequency and tornado deaths to earthquakes, discussing the difference in earthquake preparedness between areas that ride the lines where plates of the Earth's crust touch, and areas prone to intraplate earthquakes. The latter receive much less attention—both in terms of research, and safety preparation. Meanwhile, speaking of tornadoes, a group of writers from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, have put together a downloadable ebook of stories and essays about their hometown. The download is free, but the writers are hoping that people who like the book will donate money toward relief efforts that will help the city recover. Download the ebook. Donate. Thanks to Brian Oliu! | |||
| Did you hear the one about the Higgs boson? Posted: 10 May 2011 08:25 AM PDT Is the rumor mill ruining particle physics? Interesting article in Nature News about what happens when scientific data is leaked to the press before it's been analyzed, peer-reviewed, and published. Via Brendan Maher. | |||
| ReachOut Reads: YA fiction to comfort and inspire kids coping with mental health issues Posted: 10 May 2011 08:20 AM PDT  ReachOut is a project to help young people cope with hard personal problems and mental health issues; they're spending the month of May highlighting young adult fiction that presents hopeful scenarios to comfort and inspire. The books were vetted by the The Young Adult Library Services Association of the American Library Assocation and the project is supplemented by authors hosting issue-oriented live chats for teens. ReachOut Reads (Thanks, Anastasia!) | |||
| Allergies explained using cookies and candy Posted: 10 May 2011 08:16 AM PDT Just in time for Spring, ScienceGoddess, aka Joanne Manaster, explains the cellular reactions that cause allergies. Her illustrations: candy (looks like Skittles or M&Ms) and a lovely cookie basophil made by food blogger Notsohumblepie. This video ends on something of a cliffhanger, so if you want to watch the next one, it's all about eosinophils. | |||
| Fukushima: Nuclear chain reactions may have temporarily restarted 12 days after earthquake Posted: 10 May 2011 08:53 AM PDT New evidence suggests that nuclear chain reactions at the Fukushima power plant didn't end when the generators were initially shut down, following the March 11 earthquake. Technology Review explains why Tetsuo Matsui, a researcher at the University of Tokyo, thinks conditions inside two of the damaged generator units may have temporarily restarted chain reactions 12 days after the shutdown.
READ MORE at Technology Review EDIT: In the comments, David Voss makes a good point about this story, which I should have thought about. "Keep in mind that the Physics arxiv blog at Technology Review discusses preprints posted on the arxiv.org server. Arxiv.org is a valuable way for researchers to communicate, but these prepublication papers may or may not have been vetted by colleagues, may or may not have been peer-reviewed, may or may not eventually be published. There is a minimal level of filtering to remove overtly crazy stuff but that is about it. This may be relevant also to your post on "Is the rumor mill ruining particle physics?" Via David Biello | |||
| Paying For It: a Comic-Strip Memoir About Being a John, by Chester Brown Posted: 10 May 2011 08:07 AM PDT  (I interviewed Chester Brown about Paying for It. You can listen to the interview on the Gweek bonus podcast 002. Subscribe to the Gweek podcast here: iTunes | RSS.) I've been reading Chester Brown's comic books since the early 1980s when he self published a mini comic called Yummy Fur (eventually published by Vortex Comics). He's from Montréal and is good friends with cartoonists Joe Matt and Seth. Brown's latest work is a fascinating 280-page memoir called Paying For It: a Comic-Strip Memoir About Being a John (Drawn & Quarterly). It's about his experiences being a customer of prostitutes since 1999. Brown started paying for sex a few years after his girlfriend broke up with him (he stayed celibate for three years after the break-up) and he decided the emotional toll of romantic relationships was too much to bear and swore off ever having a girlfriend again. With some trepidation, he began seeing prostitutes in Toronto. There is nothing erotic about Paying For It, even though there is some nudity and depictions of sex. Instead, Brown focuses on his inner dialogue while visiting prostitutes ("Why did I care if I hurt her feelings? She lied -- she's not in any way like the description in her ad." "The last few times I've seen Anne I've felt empty afterwards.") and the frank conversations with Seth and Matt, who are at turns bemused and concerned for their friend's practice of hiring prostitutes and his decision to abandon romantic relationships. As you can see in the sample above, the comic is drawn in small, sedate, panels, and Brown's expression never changes from panel to panel. He appears to be emotionally flat. Robert Crumb writes in the introduction to Paying For It: Chester Brown is not of this planet. He is probably the result of one of those alien abductions where they stick a needle in a human woman's abdomen and impregnate her. He is a very advanced human. You can tell by looking at the photo of him. Notice how, throughout the book, his facial expression is always the same. His mouth is a slit. He never shows his teeth, never grins, never grimaces. The opposite of my portrayals of myself. Chester Brown's neutrality in the world is, in my estimation, quite admirable. As Jesus said, "Be as passers-by." In the "Notes" section of Paying For It, Seth writes: I often jokingly refer to Chet as "the robot." In posing a question to him I might quip, "Perhaps I should ask a person who has actual human emotions instead." The truth is, Chester seems to have a very limited emotional range compared to most people. There does seem to be something wrong with him. He's definitely an oddball. That said, he is also the kindest, gentlest and most deeply thoughtful oddball I know. Perhaps he is missing something in his emotional makeup, perhaps not. Who can say what is natural and what is learned behavior? I'll say this -- he really doesn't appear to be suffering. You can't argue with that. A 30-page afterword is devoted to Brown's arguments in favor of the legalization of prostitution. To me, this is not nearly as interesting as the comic that precedes it. |
GameSave is a hack-a-thon style event which takes place over the course of 5 weeks, during which multiple teams of game developers and emergency relief professionals will each create a complete game concept and working demo aimed at an aspect of disaster relief. Teams can be assembled in several ways. A team can be composed of independent individuals who organize themselves initially through our registration site and wiki. Teams can also be sponsored as a unit by their respective employers. 
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