The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- Lemon hand-grenades
- LEAKED: UK copyright lobby holds closed-door meetings with gov't to discuss national Web-censorship regime
- What is the deal with all of these YouTube videos of tiny plastic food?
- Chemcraft (vintage chemistry set, from Boing Boing Flickr Pool)
- Derp: Hunting LulzSec, FBI seizes webservers, taking unrelated sites offline
- Mlkshk needs help
- Ancient recordings rot undigitized thanks to ℗ snags
- British phone booth updated with Skype
- The history of fallout shelter signs
- Magic Mouse (photo from Boing Boing Flickr Pool)
- Naked Bike Ride Day around the world: extra-large photo gallery
- Everything is a Remix, pt. 3
- US Senate confirms Leon Panetta as secretary of Defense
- Neural prosthesis improves rats' memories
- Tune: sfnal rom-com webcomic
- Sleep aid app Pzizz now available for Android
- Car-racing game on a thermal printer
- The Pulque Renaissance
- House stolen
- How to encrypt your Dropbox files until Dropbox wakes the f*ck up
- Giveaway! Watchismo offers three Diesel watches
- NPR collecting best science fiction of all time reccos
- Contact Innovation Awards from Doug Rushkoff
- Sick man robs bank for $1, demands jail and healthcare
- Wood artworks with cellular automata patterns
- Tin zeppelin: airship harmonicas
- Newsprint-scented candle
- Insane Clown Posse vs. a Juggalo parody: F**kin' fair use, how does it work?
- Nokia's N9 is "beautifully simple"
- Apple announces new Final Cut Pro X
| Posted: 22 Jun 2011 04:56 AM PDT  Chris Myles created these Portal-inspired Aperture Science lemon grenades ("COMBUSTIBLE LEMONS - MODEL: 0419"). Fantastic work -- duck and cover! Tops from some old airsoft bb loaders, random springs to make the spoons fly off when you pull the pins, some paper plus modge podge labels, and a hacked greeting card so when the spoon comes off Cave does his rant and then a big BOOOM.Combustible Lemons (via Neatorama) |
| Posted: 22 Jun 2011 02:46 AM PDT A group of UK copyright lobbyists held confidential, closed-door meetings with Ed Vaizey, Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries to discuss a plan to allow industry groups to censor the Internet in the UK. The proposal has leaked, and it reveals a plan to establish "expert bodies" that would decide which websites British people were allowed to see, to be approved by a judge using a "streamlined" procedure. The procedure will allow for "swift" blocking in order to shut down streaming of live events. Public interest groups like the Open Rights Group asked to attend the meeting, but were shut out, presaging a regulatory process that's likely to be a lopsided, industry-centric affair that doesn't consider the public. The process is characterised as "voluntary," but the proposal makes reference to the Digital Economy Act, which allows for mandatory web-blocking (thanks to the action of LibDem Lords who submitted a proposal written by a record industry lobbyist as an amendment to the DEA). The Open Rights Group has a campaign to repeal the DEA that you can sign onto. We would like confirmation from the government that these are genuine proposals which they are actively considering. We would also like to know what steps they will be taking to consider the views of organisations such as Open Rights Group, and those others who recently wrote to rights holders expressing their concern and requesting such proposals are made public.Premier League joins group lobbying for web blocking, proposing confused "voluntary" scheme - overseen by the courts (James Firth) Rights holders' proposed voluntary website blocking scheme (Open Rights Group) |
| What is the deal with all of these YouTube videos of tiny plastic food? Posted: 21 Jun 2011 10:16 PM PDT Seriously, what is the deal with these teeny-tiny miniature food videos, and why can't we stop watching them? Why wash the dishes? The food is plastic! The ladles that hold themselves up, I just am overwhelmed with the silliness of some of these things.
When they're cooking with the tiny utensils I keep expecting a teeny tiny Julia Child to pop out. It's very weirdly soothing to have someone completely silently cook miniature plastic food. |
| Chemcraft (vintage chemistry set, from Boing Boing Flickr Pool) Posted: 21 Jun 2011 09:37 PM PDT |
| Derp: Hunting LulzSec, FBI seizes webservers, taking unrelated sites offline Posted: 21 Jun 2011 09:39 PM PDT [Video Link, by Beschizza.] As part of an ongoing hunt for LulzSec, the FBI raided DigitalOne's data center today. But sloppy work by agents in charge of the raid caused unrelated websites to go offline. The victims included Instapaper, and various restaurant and real estate sites belonging to Curbed Network. From the New York Times: DigitalOne provided all necessary information to pinpoint the servers for a specific I.P. address, Mr. Ostroumow said. However, the agents took entire server racks, perhaps because they mistakenly thought that "one enclosure is = to one server," he said in an e-mail. |
| Posted: 21 Jun 2011 08:34 PM PDT Mlkshk is an image- and video-sharing site that's fun, accessible and useful. Creator Andre Torrez describes how he and his wife built it, bootstrapping it without investment and without having to worry about what outsiders think such a site needs to do. MLKSHK is an amazing product that I'm incredibly proud of and the community is growing quickly (we've been doing 50% growth each week for the last month) and using the site because they get that we can deliver a good, beautifully designed product with just the right features. Also there are pictures of cats.You can sign up for free, but paid accounts are just $2 a month and they're adding new features all the time. It's amazing to see how far a strong vision will take an idea; compare it to Color, another new image-sharing startup built on $41m of strings-attached capital. Challenged over its already-evident failings, Color's founder told the New York Times that "It's literally going to turn your Facebook network from 500 people to 750 million people," as if the whole idea were not to help people conveniently share stuff with friends but to push mankind itself over the collective liminality of psychopathic narcissism. |
| Ancient recordings rot undigitized thanks to ℗ snags Posted: 21 Jun 2011 07:42 PM PDT At The Economist, Glenn Fleishmann examines the elaborate legal maze surrounding copyright in sound recordings, whose duration varies wildly for the strangest reasons. The sound of Thomas Edison's first recorded words in 1877 are lost, but he said they were, "Mary had a little lamb". Had the cylinder containing that utterance survived, it would remain firmly under copyright protection in America at least until 2067. A quirk of the federal copyright law with regard to recordings means that nearly all music, spoken word, and other aural treats produced before the early 1970s are currently protected until the second half of the 21st century. Sonically speaking, the public domain is a wasteland.The special copyright symbol in the headline, assuming it has rendered correctly, is the sound recording copyright symbol; the "p" stands for "phonogram." The sound of silence [Babbage at The Economist] |
| British phone booth updated with Skype Posted: 21 Jun 2011 06:52 PM PDT
Gallery [Picasa] |
| The history of fallout shelter signs Posted: 21 Jun 2011 06:40 PM PDT  Photo:Michael Rosenstein Bill Geerhart has published a history of fallout shelter signs, the oft-faded Cold War relics still to be seen nationwide.
An indelible cold war symbol: the complete history of the fallout shelter sign [Conelrad. Submitted by M.R.] |
| Magic Mouse (photo from Boing Boing Flickr Pool) Posted: 21 Jun 2011 03:15 PM PDT  Image: Violet 03, a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike (2.0) image from pkmousie's photostream, contributed to the Boing Boing Flickr Pool. |
| Naked Bike Ride Day around the world: extra-large photo gallery Posted: 21 Jun 2011 02:52 PM PDT  Cyclists ride during the World Naked Bike Ride in Mexico City. More photos from around the world, below. Probably "NSFW," depending on where you "W." (REUTERS/Jorge Lopez)
Below: Cyclists raise their bikes in the air during the 2011 World Naked Bike Ride in Guadalajara, Mexico. (REUTERS/Alejandro Acosta) |
| Posted: 21 Jun 2011 02:20 PM PDT Enjoy part three of Everything is a Remix, the brilliant documentary about the true sources of innovation. |
| US Senate confirms Leon Panetta as secretary of Defense Posted: 21 Jun 2011 02:19 PM PDT Panetta confirmed, 100-1. Like they weren't gonna greenlight the guy who took credit for nabbing bin Laden! |
| Neural prosthesis improves rats' memories Posted: 20 Jun 2011 10:13 PM PDT Vnend sez, "Researchers at the University of Southern California have created an artificial memory based on studies of how rats form memories. Not only did the chip(s) allow rats that had had their ability to form permanent memories blocked remember things longer than short-term memory would allow, the chips also worked in rats with functioning long term memory. Duplicating the work in primates is the next step." A cortical neural prosthesis for restoring and enhancing memory (Journal of Neural Engineering) USC: Restoring Memory, Repairing Damaged Brains (PR Newswire) (Thanks, Vnend!) |
| Posted: 21 Jun 2011 02:12 PM PDT  Derek Kirk Kim and LesMcClaine relaunched the Tune webcomic today. Gina from publisher FirstSecond writes, "Tune is a sci-fi slice-of-life romantic comedy adventure of interdimensional proportions. When art school drop-out Andy Go resigns himself to a lackluster day job, he unknowingly corners himself into a life of incarceration. In a parallel universe. Will he make it back home? Will he survive the attempt? Will he ever get laid?" |
| Sleep aid app Pzizz now available for Android Posted: 21 Jun 2011 01:29 PM PDT The popular "anti-insomnia" and sleep regulation app Pzizz is now available on the Android platform. Buy it here, watch a screencast here. |
| Car-racing game on a thermal printer Posted: 20 Jun 2011 10:19 PM PDT  Joshua Noble's "Receipt Racer" is a car-racing game played using a thermal receipt printer; it reminds me of the games I used to write in BASIC on our old teletype terminal, which we loaded with enormous rolls of brownish paper towel of the sort you could get in elementary school bathrooms (once the paper was used up, we re-rolled it and ran the other side through the teletype, though filling a roll took a long time at 110 Baud!). The game is played on a receipt printer, a common device you can see at every convenient store. It prints those papers you usually find crumbled up in your pockets, just to throw them away. It is a thermal printer using heat to darken the paper. This eliminates any slowdowns in printing lots of black. A roll can be ordered online and costs around 80 cents.RECEIPT RACER (Thanks, Manny!) |
| Posted: 21 Jun 2011 12:55 PM PDT  "I heard it tasted like warm spit. But that is a lie. —A dude drinking the ancient Aztec alcoholic beverage pulque for the first time, at a pulqueria in Mexico City. More about pulque's comeback in this Washington Post article. Below, vintage pulque ephemera found in [hexell.livejournal.com]'s excellent LJ gallery: old images of indigenous life in Mexico, Central America, and the Southwestern US. The text on the back of this old postcard says, "Pulque is the national drink of Mexico. This plant requires from six to ten years to mature in its native soil. In flowering times this plant is full of sap, which gathers quickly and is removed two or three times a day. This drink is best immediately after fermentation and tastes a good deal like stale buttermilk diluted with stagnant water - a thin, starchy, evil smelling liquor. Few of the better grade of Mexicans drink pulque. It is the beverage of the poor."(via John Schwartz) |
| Posted: 20 Jun 2011 10:24 PM PDT  A man in Dundee, Ontario had his double-wide portable house ripped off: It did not take long for police to find the home, as it was located only 10 kilometers north of police headquarters on a plot of land in Proton Station, Ont.Police find Brampton man's stolen house (via Lowering the Bar) (Image: double wide trailer, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from pinkmoose's photostream) |
| How to encrypt your Dropbox files until Dropbox wakes the f*ck up Posted: 21 Jun 2011 12:33 PM PDT  The file storage and sharing service Dropbox has been in the news much of late because of incidents in which user account security was compromised. The latest happened just this past Sunday: a programming error left every single Dropbox user account exposed, password-free, for at least four hours. Kinda major. Other than these increasingly frequent security failures, they've had a pretty great service going. I've been a fan for some time. I'm on the fence about whether to drop Dropbox, or hang on with limited use and see if they turn things around. Rich Mogull at Securosis has a post up today suggesting one option for people like me who may still want to use Dropbox (well, for non-sensitive files), but want to take extra steps to increase odds that your private stuff stays private. Short version: encrypt your shit! Here are a couple easy ways to encrypt your data until Dropbox themselves wake up, or someone else comes out with an alternative service that is as reliable from a data storage and sync standpoint. Read the rest (securosis.com). And Rich's advice is wise for people who use other hosted storage services, too (notably, BTW, an increasing number of them are now just front-ends for Dropbox). Just because we're only hearing about these screwups with Dropbox doesn't mean they're the only service where such breaches can occur, or already have.
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| Giveaway! Watchismo offers three Diesel watches Posted: 21 Jun 2011 12:21 PM PDT  Our pals at Watchismo have three brand-new Diesel watches -- worth $250-$320 each!--to give away to Boing Boing readers. The three models are the DZ4201, the DZ4202 and the DZ7221, military-themed timepieces that look like they could stop bullets. All you have to do is become a fan of theirs on Facebook. If you like, you can also post to our comments your illustrations of imaginary creatures that can survive only on the internet. |
| NPR collecting best science fiction of all time reccos Posted: 20 Jun 2011 10:30 PM PDT  NPR is asking its listeners to contribute their favorite science fiction and fantasy novels to a summer reading poll with the idea of generating a top 100 list; they've excluded YA titles, alas (they're doing a separate YA list next year), as well as paranormal romance and horror. Even so, they've had over 1,500 comments so far! Best Science Fiction, Fantasy Books? You Tell Us (via IO9) (Image: Science Fiction: What It's All About by Sam J Lundwall, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from brighton's photostream) |
| Contact Innovation Awards from Doug Rushkoff Posted: 21 Jun 2011 11:25 AM PDT  As part of Douglas Rushkoff's Contact Summit conference October 20 in New York City, a donor has put up $30,000 for Doug to give away "to encourage the conception and deployment of innovative networking and technology solutions to our greatest collective challenges." At the Contact Summit, a group of judges will award three $10,000 prizes for the "most compelling and achievable ideas." More at Doug's blog. "Contact Innovation Awards" |
| Sick man robs bank for $1, demands jail and healthcare Posted: 21 Jun 2011 11:04 AM PDT A North Carolina man with no health care robbed a bank for $1 in order to go to jail and get his ailments seen to. He is hoping to be convicted of a felony, so he can get the benefits he lost after he was laid off from his 17-year Coca-Cola delivery job. He has carpal tunnel, a bad back, and "a protrusion on his chest." He is in chronic pain. He has promised to reoffend if he isn't convicted and treated. Bank robber planned crime and punishment (Image: One Dollar, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from rychlepozicky's photostream) |
| Wood artworks with cellular automata patterns Posted: 21 Jun 2011 11:07 AM PDT  Jeff Cook makes handcrafted art from exotic woods overlaid with patterns generated by cellular automata. You can see his work in person at Chalk Los Angeles through July. From Jeff's Wolfrule site: Wolfrule Art is based on patterns generated by an extremely primitive computing device, the cellular automaton, which, as postulated by Wolfram, may some day explain the basic principles of much of life and nature. These patterns are used in art constructions made from wood, a basic product of nature, producing art that uses computations to produce patterns that may form the basis of life itself. Both the background and the pattern are made from wood. The selection of contrasting woods, with variations in grain and color, provide a stark and striking exhibition of the geometric patterns computed by the cellular automaton...Jeff Cook's Wolfrule art |
| Tin zeppelin: airship harmonicas Posted: 20 Jun 2011 10:32 PM PDT  From How to Be a Retronaut, a small collection of airship-shaped harmonicas from the first three decades of the 20th Century. |
| Posted: 21 Jun 2011 10:00 AM PDT  Offered for $65 at Bondtoo, this candle is said to smell like newsprint, though it isn't clear whether they mean burning or standard, non-ironic newsprint. In any case, Gizmodo's Casey Chan remarks, it "probably smells like death." |
| Insane Clown Posse vs. a Juggalo parody: F**kin' fair use, how does it work? Posted: 21 Jun 2011 09:53 AM PDT From The Onion AV Club: "According to members of the Upright Citizens Brigade, the Insane Clown Posse forced the cancellation of a UCB show, after issuing a cease and desist and threatening legal action over Saturday’s scheduled “The Gathering Of The Juggalos For A Mother Fucking Baby Funeral” at the group’s New York theater." (thanks, Andrea James) |
| Nokia's N9 is "beautifully simple" Posted: 21 Jun 2011 09:47 AM PDT  Nokia's N9—the MeeGo OS's last stand—will be out later this year at a price yet to be determined. It has a 3.9" AMOLED display with polarized glass, an 8 megapixel digital camera, and up to 64GB of storage. There are no hardware buttons, either, except for volume and power controls: it's touchscreen all the way down. It's "beautifully simple," according to the press release, and comes in black, pink and cornflower blue. [Nokia] |
| Apple announces new Final Cut Pro X Posted: 21 Jun 2011 09:42 AM PDT Exciting news for video editors: FCP X, a new version of Final Cut Pro released today. $299 download from the Apple Store. |
Prof. Michael Shaughnessy (
"Flip the switch on, and the rats remember. Flip it off, and the rats forget," said Theodore Berger of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering's Department of Biomedical Engineering... 
He took a cab down New Hope Road and picked a bank at random -- RBC Bank. | You are subscribed to email updates from Boing Boing To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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