The Latest from Boing Boing

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• Schoolkids vs. disco Illuminati
• Hacker stock art
• Pewter model of the Texas School Book Depository
• Mercury Men: science fiction web-series made for less than $10K
• Gold headphone amp with Swarovski crystal
• Handheld magnetrons for making crop circles?
• World’s oldest protractor?
• What Murdoch’s media empire did: the big picture
• Trees “shaped” into sculptures
• Deeper look at why prices end in .99
• NASCAR prayer, autotuned
• Autodesk buys Instructables!
• Art magazine designed for easy re-use as giftwrap
• World Science Fiction Travel Fund
• Dial M for Murdoch
• Age of Fable, a painterly old-school adventure
• Diablo 3 “auction house” to use real money
• Flowchart shows the complexity of the New Zealand’s Internet Disconnection copyright law
• Leica gets a splash of color
• Teenager said to be LulzSec’s Topiary bailed
• Debt deal reached
• Married lesbian couple rescued 40 teenagers from drowning during Utøya shooting
• CUBATV: photos of Cuban televisions and environs
• FBI has lead on D.B. Cooper
• Putting the Internet freedom movement into context: Barefoot into Cyberspace
• Pin-Up Art of Humorama collects racy comics from Dave Berg, Basil Wolverton, and others

Schoolkids vs. disco Illuminati Posted: 01 Aug 2011 08:23 PM PDT In this performance from 1982, schoolchildren face off against the disco Illuminati of Pink Project, their dueling renditions of Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall (part 2) and Alan Parsons Project’s Mammagamma merging into a groovy mashup a fair few years ahead of its time. An extended mix is also available. If you like it, the next stop is Pink Project’s mix of Jean Michele Jarre’s Oxygene and APP’s Hyper Gamma Spaces. The next stop after that is paying too much for a tatty vinyl at eBay Italy.

Hacker stock art Posted: 01 Aug 2011 05:42 PM PDT All photos: Shutterstock and Reuters. Problem: Until they’re captured, alleged hackers don’t make for stories with good art. But readers won’t look at words unless they are immediately adjacent to pictures. Solution: stock art! I am delighted to report that there is an abundance of stock art geared toward illustrating news stories about cybercrime. KEYBOARDS If you’re in a hurry, the traditional standby for stories about hacking is a picture of hands typing on a keyboard. Since you won’t have a relevant caption to go with it, stuff in some engaging statistics about the prevalence of hacking and software piracy. The best way to protect a computer from network intrusion is to wrap it in chains and place a physical lock on it. Particularly advanced computers are provided with a “security” key to offer immediate protection from hackers. When cybercriminals break into and transfer money out of their victims’ accounts, it immediately materializes on their computers in the form of fresh, unmarked bank notes and prepaid debit cards. Adept cybercriminals can type with their shadows. Stories speculating about the technical flaws that permit cybercrime may be illustrated by pictures of stethoscopes being used to inspect computer hardware. Some keyboards can accomodate money and a stethoscope. Hackers can reach through the internet like it’s some kind of fucking seance. COMPUTER SCREENS Many hacking stories can be illustrated by a photo of a website at an unusual angle. Suggest tragedy with error messages. By making the angle more oblique and by tightening the depth of field, one can illustrate the mindboggling level of criminal genius at which all hackers operate. Photo: Reuters / Jim Bourg THE CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS Dwarfing passers-by, Sony Corporation’s skyscraper is seen here from an intimidating perspective to reveal the victim’s immense size and importance, thereby illustrating the newsworthiness of the hacker’s criminal achievements. Photo: Toru Hanai / Reuters THE HACKER AND HIS VICTIM Hackers type while wearing thick leather burglar gloves, to ensure that no fingerprints are left on their own computers. This man is bathed in the glow of the monitor. Is he a hacker or a victim? Like cartoon dragons, the color of the glow is semiotically significant. White light, resulting in natural tones, is for victims and security experts. Blue-bathed hackers are thieves. Green-tinted hackers are exploring The Matrix. Red glows are for evil hackers, especially cyber-bullies. The rarest and most prized breed of hacker is one whose compexion is so gaunt that his face provides specular reflections of whatever is on screen, like a mirror. Hackers come in two basic varieties: Ninja and Hoodlum. A business suit and balaclava are mandatory for the successful execution of corporate-level cybercrime. THE CHINESE CYBERCAFE State intelligence agents forcing their way into the Pentagon or Lockheed Martin are often to be found working in public cafes in Shenzhen and Hong Kong. They’re easy to spot, however, because they use full-screen images of the PRC flag as screensavers. Reuters / Kin Cheung If all else fails, just run a picture of some binary emanating from an eye or zoomy matrix text.

Pewter model of the Texas School Book Depository Posted: 01 Aug 2011 12:36 PM PDT You can now have your very own detailed replica of the Texas School Book Depository Building as it looked on November 22, 1963, the day Lee Harvey Oswald (allegedly) shot John F. Kennedy from the sixth floor. This fine pewter reproduction is 3-1/4″ tall. What’s next, a scale model of the grassy knoll? Loren Coleman has more over at Twilight Language. “Own The Texas School Book Depository Building“

Mercury Men: science fiction web-series made for less than $10K Posted: 01 Aug 2011 12:26 PM PDT Craig Engler sez, “The Mercury Men is a kick-ass new Web series made for under $10,000 in Pittsburgh with ray guns, evil aliens and even a brain in a jar. It’s a modern homage to the black-and-white serials of the early 1900s featuring a (literally) mild mannered engineer who normally toils away at an office in obscurity until he stumbles on a plot by The Mercury Men to destroy Earth. It was picked up by Syfy for distribution and began running online lat week at SyFy.” The Mercury Men | Syfy (Thanks, Craig!)

Gold headphone amp with Swarovski crystal Posted: 01 Aug 2011 12:08 PM PDT NuForce’s uDAC-2 Signature Gold Edition 24bit/96kHz USB digital audio converter is for the discerning music enthusiast interested in connecting their computer to a stereo system or headphones. It will unlock the audio potential of their digital music files. The exterior gold plating classes up ions in the surrounding air, allowing a smooth and confusion-free journey for your electrons. It is also “adorned” with a Swarovski crystal, an understatement that veils the crystal’s true technical purpose, which is to diffract the quantum-genetic memory of the universe to restore the missing data in your collection of shitty 192kbps MP3s. The NuForce uDAC-2 is cryogenically-enhanced and costs $400. NuForce Introduces a Lustrous Gold-Plated Digital Audio Converter for the Most Discerning Headphone Enthusiasts [NuForce]

Handheld magnetrons for making crop circles? Posted: 01 Aug 2011 10:21 AM PDT Greenpeace’s GM Crop Circle from Circlemakers.org Are planks and rope now obsolete crop circle technology? Physicist Richard Taylor, director of the Materials Science Institute at the University of Oregon, posits that GPS, lasers, and handheld magnetrons may be the new tricks of the trade. He reports on his research in this month’s issue of the journal Physics World. From the Institute of Physics: Microwaves, Taylor suggests, could be used to make crop stalks fall over and cool in a horizontal position – a technique that could explain the speed and efficiency of the artists and the incredible detail that some crop circles exhibit. Indeed, one research team claims to be able to reproduce the intricate damage inflicted on crops using a handheld magnetron, readily available from microwave ovens, and a 12 V battery. As Taylor writes, "Crop-circle artists are not going to give up their secrets easily. This summer, unknown artists will venture into the countryside close to your homes and carry out their craft, safe in the knowledge that they are continuing the legacy of the most science-oriented art movement in history." “Physics could be behind the secrets of crop-circle artists” (Thanks, Jacques Vallee!)

World’s oldest protractor? Posted: 01 Aug 2011 10:08 AM PDT This object was found more than a century ago in an Egyptian tomb belonging to an ancient architect who lived around 1400 BCE. In the Turin museum where it’s displayed, the artifact is identified as a decorative case for a balancing scale. However, physicist Amelia Sparavigna thinks it may be the oldest surviving protractor. From New Scientist: The key, she says, lies in the numbers encoded in the object’s ornate decoration, which resembles a compass rose with 16 evenly spaced petals surrounded by a circular zigzag with 36 corners. Sparavigna says that if the straight bar part of the object were laid on a slope, a plumb line would revealed its inclination on the circular dial. The fraction of one-sixteenth features in a calculus system the Egyptians used, says Sparavigna, and they also identified 36 star groups called the decans, which later formed the basis of a star clock. She suggests the object was “a protractor instrument with two scales, one based on Egyptian fractions, the other based on decans”. “Egyptian tomb mystery may be world’s first protractor” (Thanks, Bob Pescovitz!)

What Murdoch’s media empire did: the big picture Posted: 01 Aug 2011 10:04 AM PDT Alternet’s Russ Baker goes beyond the individual sins of the Murdoch media empire — the phone hacking and such — and looks at the big picture: what has the Murdoch empire done to the world? He has undermined liberty: His outlets led the drumbeat for restriction or elimination of certain fundamental rights, including those under the US Fourth Amendment, while at the same time supporting unrestrained wiretapping, the harsh treatment of suspects who may have done nothing wrong, and fueling panic justifying the build-up of the national surveillance state. He has turned the public against the press. By the generally inferior product produced, with a few exceptions, by the majority of the news outlets he controls and the tawdry methods sponsored by many of them, he has eroded the public's confidence in media in general, tarnishing its belief even in those outfits whose work deserves to be taken seriously. He has also used his outlets to convince the public that other, more conscientious news organizations are ideologically suspect and biased. What Rupert Murdoch Means For You Personally (via Making Light)

Trees “shaped” into sculptures Posted: 01 Aug 2011 09:56 AM PDT Peter Cook and Becky Northe of Queensland, Australia use wire frameworks to “guide” trees into interesting live sculptures, including figures, chairs, tables, and other stranger shapes. Pooktre has perfected a Gradual shaping method, which is the shaping of trees as they grow along predetermined designs. Designing and setting up the supporting framework are fundamental to the success of a tree. Some are intended for harvest to be high quality indoor furniture and others will remain living art. Pooktre Tree Shapers

Deeper look at why prices end in .99 Posted: 01 Aug 2011 09:48 AM PDT The companion site for the book Life’s Little Mysteries: Answers to Fascinating Questions About the World Around You has a short post summarizing why most prices end with .99. Of course, there’s the obvious “psychological pricing” reason that when a shopper sees something that costs $5.99, the .99 is subconsciously ignored, making the item much more attractively priced than if it was $6. But more intriguing is this bit summarized from a 2003 Harvard Business Review article titled “Mind Your Pricing Cues” (PDF). From Life’s Little Mysteries: “Some retailers do reserve prices that end in 9 for their discounted items. Comparisons of prices at major department stores reveal that this is common, particularly for apparel,” wrote Eric Anderson, professor of marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and Duncan Simester, professor of management science at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management, in their article. For instance, the clothing stores J. Crew and Ralph Lauren typically price regular merchandise in whole dollar amounts and stick 99-cent endings on discounted items. These retailers purposely avoid ending their regular prices in .99 so that consumers won’t associate the items with cheap deals. By contrast, stores attempting to project an image of selling underpriced goods will make it a point to end all their items’ tags – regularly priced and discounted alike – in .99. “Why Do Most Prices End in .99?” (Life’s Little Mysteries)

NASCAR prayer, autotuned Posted: 01 Aug 2011 09:21 AM PDT Here is the convincingly country stylings of Pastor Joe Nelms in an inevitable autotuning of his epic NASCAR prayer blogged by Xeni last week.

Autodesk buys Instructables! Posted: 01 Aug 2011 09:05 AM PDT Congratulations to our dear pals at Instructables, just acquired by Autodesk! From Eric Wilhelm’s message: The Instructables community is incredible: you build, bake, and create amazing things, then share your projects and ideas with the world. I think it's great when someone builds a project using instructions from our site, but it's even more amazing when we inspire someone to start (or finish) that project they've always dreamed of. This has been my vision for Instructables: to have a positive impact on the world by giving passionate people great publishing tools to document their projects, and connect them to a community full of like-minded people… Autodesk is a great cultural fit for Instructables. They make tools for creative people: they're the world leader in 3D design, engineering, and entertainment software. Even if you don't recognize the name Autodesk, their software has powered the movies you watch, and designed the cars you drive and the buildings you work in. Instructables will be the community arm of the same team that makes 123D, SketchBook, Homestyler, and Pixlr, which will help provide creative tools, inspiration, and services for all types of creative people. “Instructables Joins Autodesk“

Art magazine designed for easy re-use as giftwrap Posted: 01 Aug 2011 08:59 AM PDT The appositely named Wrapper art magazine is designed to be disassembled after reading and re-used as wrapping paper and stationery: We have also altered our format a little since issue one, so Wrap is now bigger than before with a harder cover. We’ve had the back cover perforated so it can become a set of 8 notecards to match all the prints inside and all the sheets are only folded over once, so they’re kept as neat and flat as possible, ready for when you need to pull them out and wrap up a present! The Wrapper (via Neatorama)

World Science Fiction Travel Fund Posted: 01 Aug 2011 08:55 AM PDT Lavie Tidhar sez, “We’re launching the World SF Travel Fund, to to enable one international person involved in science fiction, fantasy or horror to travel to a major genre event. The first person will be Charles A. Tan, from the Philippines, who is currently nominated for a World Fantasy Award. We are running a fund-raiser with some amazing prizes, including an original illustration by China Mieville from Un Lun Dun, a special donation from Neil Gaiman, a whole score of books from PS Publishing, and e-books and other rewards from Angry Robot Books, Chizine, Apex Publications, Tachyon and PS Publishing.

Dial M for Murdoch Posted: 01 Aug 2011 08:46 AM PDT Photo: Marc/Wooster Collective

Age of Fable, a painterly old-school adventure Posted: 01 Aug 2011 08:35 AM PDT Illustrated with classic and contemporary artwork, Age of Fable is an absorbing gamebook played in the browser. Want to make your own? Download the source code. [Apolitical via Indiegames]

Diablo 3 “auction house” to use real money Posted: 01 Aug 2011 07:58 AM PDT I’ve been waiting for Diablo 3 for ten years. However, Diablo 3 will now encourage players to buy and sell items for real money, which means I won’t be waiting for it any more. [RPS]

Flowchart shows the complexity of the New Zealand’s Internet Disconnection copyright law Posted: 01 Aug 2011 07:55 AM PDT New Zealand’s new copyright law provides for Internet disconnection for anyone whose Internet connection has been used by someone (or several someoneones) who are accused of three acts of copyright infringement. While the UN has condemned this law as disproportionate and disrespectful of human rights, its proponents often talk of its “simplicity” as a virtue (as in, “well, anyone who thinks about infringing copyright will be able to understand this: you download, you lose your network connection”). But as this three-page flowchart from the Telecommunications Carriers’ Forum demonstrates, the process of disconnection is so ramified and baroque that it requires deep study just to get your head around, and easily answering questions like, “How do I appeal this?” is anything but simple. Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Act – process diagrams (Thanks, Juha!)

Leica gets a splash of color Posted: 01 Aug 2011 07:35 AM PDT If you’ve ever wanted to pay $750 for a stylish Leica version of a $450 Lumix camera, only to pay another $400 to make it resemble a dollar store water pistol, now’s your chance! [Colorware via Gadget Lab and Uncrate]

Teenager said to be LulzSec’s Topiary bailed Posted: 01 Aug 2011 07:16 AM PDT Photo: Tim Bradshaw of the Financial Times. Jake Davis, the 18-year-old Briton accused by police of being Lulz Security spokestweeter Topiary, is out on bail. Paul Sawers writes: The suspected LulzSec member is accused of coordinating Anonymous and LulzSec attacks from his home in Yell, on the Shetland Islands. His laptop was examined and it apparently showed that he wrote a fake article claiming that Rupert Murdoch was dead, and such an article appeared on the Sun's website recently when its own system was hacked. The hearing today also revealed that Davis's computer had 750,000 people's personal details, including private log-in information. Source [TNW]

Debt deal reached Posted: 01 Aug 2011 07:02 AM PDT Republicans and Democrats in congress reached a deal late Sunday to avoid defaulting on the national debt. As expected, it involves large spending cuts, but no rollback on tax cuts for the rich—new revenues that would be supported by more than 70 percent of Americans.

Married lesbian couple rescued 40 teenagers from drowning during Utøya shooting Posted: 01 Aug 2011 06:44 AM PDT Irene says, “Among the tourists who were near Utøya on July 22, during the terrorist attack, were Hege Dalen and Toril Hansen, a married lesbian couple from Finland who deserve the title of heroines. When they heard the gunshots, they went in their boat to help. They made four trips in all, and were able to rescue about 40 teenagers from probable death.” "We were eating. Then shooting and then the awful screaming. We saw how the young people ran in panic into the lake," says Dale to HS in an interview. The couple immediately took action and pushed the boat into Lake Tyrifjorden. Dalen and Hansen drove the boat to the island, picked up from the water victims in shock in, the young and wounded, and transported them to the opposite shore to the mainland. Between runs they saw that the bullets had hit the right side of the boat. Since there were so many and not all fit at once aboard, they returned to the island four times. Why does it matter that they’re married? Well, because in some jurisdictions, when the question of gay marriage comes up, those who object to it say that gay marriage is associated with low moral character and a general erosion of public ethics. It’s a belief you’d have to be mad or terrified to embrace, but perhaps some of those scared or crazy people will have their hearts softened by this incredible example. Married lesbian couple rescues 40 kids during Norway shooting rampage (Thanks, Irene!) (Image: cropped, downsized thumbnail from Helsingin Sanomat, taken by Maija Tammi)

CUBATV: photos of Cuban televisions and environs Posted: 01 Aug 2011 06:43 AM PDT Back in 2006, I blogged about photographer Simone Lueck‘s gallery of photos of TV in Cuban families’ homes. She’s since gotten a deal to print the photos in a handsome volume, recently out from Mark Batty: “In Cuba, television is the most important communication medium and a national pastime. No matter that the TV sets themselves are outdated, pre-revolution relics imported from America or sets from Russia over fifteen years old; green-hued beasts jimmy-rigged with ancient computer parts and fantastically adorned like religious altars.” Cuba TV: Dos Canales CubaTV (online gallery)

FBI has lead on D.B. Cooper Posted: 01 Aug 2011 06:40 AM PDT The FBI is hot on the trail of D.B. Cooper, the mysterious heister who leapt from his looted airplane into myth. Nearly four decades since his disappearance, a “credible lead” has come in. From CNN: It’s been nearly four decades since a man calling himself Dan Cooper jumped out the back of Northwest Orient Flight 305, somewhere between Seattle and Reno, Nevada, carrying a parachute and some $200,000 in pilfered money. It’s not known where Cooper landed, or if he even survived the jump. But the case lives on in infamy, what the FBI calls “one of the great unsolved mysteries” in the agency’s history.

Putting the Internet freedom movement into context: Barefoot into Cyberspace Posted: 01 Aug 2011 06:36 AM PDT Becky Hogge is the former executive director of the UK Open Rights Group, but she left us a few years back to write; she says, When I left the Open Rights Group a couple of years ago to concentrate on writing, my dream was to bring geek issues like online free speech, privacy and copyright reform to a mainstream audience with a book that was cool, accessible and fun. By a stroke of luck, the year I picked to write the book, 2010, was the year WikiLeaks took hacker culture to the top of the global news agenda. The book that resulted was published last week, “Barefoot into Cyberspace”, and interweaves an insider’s take on the drama of 2010 with a mix of personal reflections and conversations with key figures in the community like Stewart Brand, Boing Boing’s own Cory Doctorow, Ethan Zuckerman and Rop Gonggrijp. This is not just another WikiLeaks book. It sets out to ask a specific set of questions that I took with me when I left digital rights campaigning. Will the internet make us more free? Or will the flood of information that courses across its networks only serve to enslave us to powerful interests that are emerging online? And how will the institutions of the old world — politics, the media, corporations — affect the utopians’ dream for a new world populated not by passive consumers but by active participants? You can buy the book on Amazon in Kindle and print formats, and it’s also available as a free download, licensed CC-BY-SA. The illustrations, which riff off John Tenniel’s original (now public domain) drawings for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, were conceived and executed by Christopher Scally, a friend from ORG days and before who also conceived the artwork for ORG’s anti-database state protest in Parliament Square some years ago, which Boing Boing reported on at the time. The book is intentionally pulpy and open-ended, leaving the reader to draw their own conclusions. It turns out this made it a bad fit for commercial publishers, so I got together with a group of friends and we flash published the book ourselves. Despite the lack of commercial interest, it doesn’t seem to have had a bad reactions from readers so far, if the first few days are anything to go by. Over the coming weeks and months, I intend to post more about the flash-publishing process, as well as share some of the raw materials that went into making the book. I’ve already posted the transcript of the interview I conducted with Julian Assange in 2009 at the Chaos Communications Congress, back when he was still a relatively unknown figure. Next up I’m hoping to post some short audio snippets from the interview I did with Cory in 2010. Barefoot Into Cyberspace (Thanks, Becky!)

Pin-Up Art of Humorama collects racy comics from Dave Berg, Basil Wolverton, and others Posted: 01 Aug 2011 05:43 AM PDT Fantagraphics’ The Pin-Up Art of Humorama collects hundreds of racy cartoons from the once-ubiquitous tasteless humor mag. In its prime, Humorama drew contributions from the great humor cartoonists of the day, everyone from MAD Magazine’s Dave Berg to Jack Cole, Basil Wolverton, and Bill Hoest. The Fantagraphic edition, edited by Alex Chun and Jacob Covey, “remasters” these toons with a two-color treatment that really captures the graphic feel of the mouldering pulps that still grace the ends of yard-sale tables in cities across America. It must be said that none of these are very funny, but they’re often quite beautiful and nostalgic. The Pin-Up Art of Humorama

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