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- Terry Pratchett initiates assisted suicide process
- City of London confiscates @towerbridge account, kills playful bot
- The Spooks' Style Guide: FOIA'd!
- Lego-making machine made of Lego
- White man from Georgia is "Gay Girl from Damascus"
- Hand-made wireless mice with typewriter-key buttons
- Bryan Lee O'Malley's Transformers fan-art
- This machine destroys everything
- Snark SN-2 Tuner
| Terry Pratchett initiates assisted suicide process Posted: 13 Jun 2011 04:49 AM PDT Beloved science fiction and fantasy writer Terry Pratchett has terminal early-onset Alzheimer's. He's determined to have the option of choosing the time and place of his death, rather than enduring the potentially horrific drawn-out death that Alzheimer's sometimes brings. But Britain bans assisted suicide, and Pratchett is campaigning to have the law changed. As part of this, he has visited Switzerland's Dignitas clinic, an assisted suicide facility, with a BBC camera crew, as part of a documentary will include Britain's first televised suicide. Pratchett took home Dignitas's assisted suicide consent forms. Sir Terry Pratchett begins process that could lead to assisted suicide (Thanks, Fipi Lele!) (Image: Terry Pratchett, Powell's, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from firepile's photostream) |
| City of London confiscates @towerbridge account, kills playful bot Posted: 13 Jun 2011 04:40 AM PDT Tom Armitage made a little twitterbot that posted updates on the status of London's Tower Bridge under the @towerbridge. It was a playful bit of civic engagement from a proud Londoner. London's municipal government thanked him by having Twitter summarily confiscate the @towerbridge ID and give it to them. As Warren Ellis notes, "Cognitive cities require the approval and collaboration of city authorities. The same people who make flyposting illegal... It's sad, and somewhat annoying - especially for Tom - but a better example that these streets are not our streets won't be found in Britain today." Where's @towerbridge? |
| The Spooks' Style Guide: FOIA'd! Posted: 12 Jun 2011 08:41 PM PDT  The National Security Agency generates lots of reports. Though we do not get to read these communiques, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request we know the standards its authors are expected to maintain. The NSA has a style guide—a Strunk and White for spooks—which we're delighted to publish here for the first time. Most of the document is an alphabetized compendium of ambiguous, easily-misused or otherwise troublesome words. As style guides go, it's standard fare: more interesting than the grammar tips are clarifications on obscure intelligence terms and the usage examples, which often lean toward military operations, geopolitics, killings and diplomacy. The FOIA request was filed on April 30, 2010 by Government Attic, and it took the NSA almost a year to release it. Posted above is a version of the guide that we've cleaned up for readability's sake. The version released by the NSA was clearly printed out from a website: pages often have crude graphical headers, denuded hyperlinks and other web-cruft. There are numerous redactions throughout, including--on every page--the URL from which the document was saved or printed before release. Please note that the text version was simply OCR'd from the cleaned-up PDF: there are many formatting errors and typos. |
| Lego-making machine made of Lego Posted: 12 Jun 2011 04:59 PM PDT  Joseph sez, "This is an exclusive Lego set that you can purchase on the factory tour in Denmark. It has semi-functional injection molding mechanics. Really a neat toy." The set consists of two moulding machines, the first was a replica of the original hand operating injector back from 1949. The second, Larger one is copy of the current Moulder that LEGO uses today that ... well made the bricks that made this model :)Moulding Machine - Exclusive - Built [Review] Moulding Machine #4000001 (Lego Insider Tour Exclusive) 4000001 Moulding Machine Review (Thanks, Joseph!) |
| White man from Georgia is "Gay Girl from Damascus" Posted: 12 Jun 2011 05:15 PM PDT 
For weeks, journalists, bloggers, and human rights advocates have been trying to track down a "disappeared" mideast blogger named Amina, who identified herself on her blog as a "Gay Girl from Damascus." The journal purported to chronicle "an out Syrian lesbian's thoughts on life, the universe and so on." Well, not so much. After she went missing, people started digging. And it turns out Amina is a 40-year-old white man from Stone Mountain, Georgia named Tom MacMaster. Christ, what an asshole. Update: Andy Carvin (@acarvin) of NPR deserves credit for pushing this story from the start, poking at cracks early on, and doing much of the sleuthing that led to the ultimate realization that this was an exploitative hoax. Here's his post at NPR.org. As usual, Andy's doing tireless and important work. |
| Hand-made wireless mice with typewriter-key buttons Posted: 12 Jun 2011 12:59 PM PDT  Baron Aaron sez, "I have always had an interest in design. This concept of mine diverts from the reclaimed materials I typically work in. The mice are fully functional and use a micro USB transmitter. Each one is unique. Specific character keys, colors, and other features are available." Wireless Computer Mice 4 Sale (Thanks, Baron Aaron!) |
| Bryan Lee O'Malley's Transformers fan-art Posted: 12 Jun 2011 04:53 PM PDT  Bryan Lee O'Malley, creator of the wonderful Scott Pilgrim comics, has posted some of the Transformers fan-art he created in 1988, when he was about 8 years old. The project, "Transformers Underground Mission," is described as "a choose your own adventure-style book." It's pretty wicked, as we said in the late 80s. It's also an important reminder of how creativity starts with learning by copying. A Bryan Lee O'Malley who was 8 years old in 2011 would almost certainly be posting his fan work online for his friends to see, and that work would be no less and no more infringing than O'Malley's work in 1988, but it would be much more likely to attract a legal threat and the attendant controversy and suppression. Transformers Underground Mission, Bryan Lee O'Malley, July 1988 (via IO9) |
| This machine destroys everything Posted: 12 Jun 2011 03:15 PM PDT [Video Link]. Update: Previously blogged on BB. Here is a link to the "shred of the month" archive. (via Jon Swaine / spaceghetto) |
| Posted: 11 Jun 2011 08:11 AM PDT  I've tried several clip-on guitar and banjo tuners over the years, and I finally found the best one: Snark SN-2. It's fast, easy to use, and very accurate. Best of all, it's cheap: $13. It's optimized for all instruments. If you only need it for guitar, get the $10 Snark SN-1. The build quality seems better than the previously reviewed Intellitouch, and the display is much nicer (glasses not required). And it's really fast and responsive. Plus, it has a "tap tempo" thing so you can tap the button along with the tune and it will tell you the beats per minute. I've been reading about it on various forums, and I haven't found any negative comments -- except for the colors. For a little bit extra you can get a black model. -- John Walkenbach Snark SN-2 Clip On Tuner |
He said: "The only thing stopping me [signing them] is that I have made this film and I have a bloody book to finish." 
I'm about to get in contact with Twitter the second I've posted this. I'm more than a little furious; after all, all the URLs that link to it are now incorrect, all the lifts, all the (puppet-mastered) banter is gone. Cool URLs don't change, and these have just gone. And in their place: marketing. 
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