$300 Million Button: making customers create logins to buy cost etailer $300M/year Alan Turing's hand-drawn Monopoly Board AntiSec leaks 10GB of law enforcement data The most beautiful female goat in the world Who is the man living in Fukushima evacuation zone? Blizzard "surprised" at fan rage over Diablo III online requirement Piers listened to voicemails; Guardian editor also used voicemail 'hack' Outside Lands 2011 limerick contest: The Winnahs! Sponsor shout out: Watchismo Friday Freak-Out: Booker T and the MGs' "Green Onions" (1967) HTTPS Everywhere goes 1.0: make your browser support to secure connections when they're available 3 things you need to know about biofuels Many US ISPs in epidemic of covert search-hijacking of their customers What's it take to get off nuclear power? Atlas rockets could carry astronauts to space again Write an adventure novel in three days, the Michael Moorcock way Lucky Cosmonaut High temperatures change parenting behavior in birds German cops call airport full-body pornoscanners "useless," EU requires opt out from scanning Dear Mr. Spielberg, please give the raptors feathers Want to live a long life? Ignore centenarians, watch Seventh Day Adventists 
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$300 Million Button: making customers create logins to buy cost etailer $300M/year
By Cory Doctorow on Aug 06, 2011 05:07 am "The $300 Million Button," Jared Spool's 2009 article on usability and ecommerce design, is remarkable in that it a) articulates something that anyone who shops widely online already knows; b) is advice that would make a lot of money for …
Continue reading → Read in browser Alan Turing's hand-drawn Monopoly Board
By Cory Doctorow on Aug 06, 2011 04:07 am Yesterday, I had the delightful experience of attending a fundraiser for Bletchley Park, the birthplace of modern computing and cryptography, where the Allied WWII cipher-breaking effort was headquartered. Cold War paranoia caused Churchill to order Bletchley broken up, its work …
Continue reading → Read in browser AntiSec leaks 10GB of law enforcement data
By Rob Beschizza on Aug 06, 2011 03:26 am AntiSec dropped a 10GB dump of information this evening, hacked from dozens of law enforcement agencies. Promised in the cache are hundreds of compromising email spools, personal information about officers, police training videos, and the contents of insecure anonymous tip …
Continue reading → Read in browser The most beautiful female goat in the world
By Rob Beschizza on Aug 05, 2011 10:22 pm Photo: Ali Jarekji / Reuters Wasieef, a Maaz Al Shami (Damascene goat), won the first prize for the "Most Beautiful Goat" title in the female category at a recent event in Amman, Jordan. The Mazayen al-Maaz competition was the first …
Continue reading → Read in browser Who is the man living in Fukushima evacuation zone?
By Mark Frauenfelder on Aug 05, 2011 08:33 pm Max Hodges of White Rabbit Press says:About two months after 3/11 I started working on this long-term documentary photography story. I took my bicycle up to Fukushima and entered the 20 kilometer evacuation zone in order to document the fate …
Continue reading → Read in browser Blizzard "surprised" at fan rage over Diablo III online requirement
By Rob Beschizza on Aug 05, 2011 06:58 pm Earlier this week, Blizzard announced that the forthcoming Diablo III would be online-only, despite not being an MMO. Fan reaction has been brutal. MTV's Russ Frushtick writes: "I'm actually kind of surprised in terms of there even being a question …
Continue reading → Read in browser Piers listened to voicemails; Guardian editor also used voicemail 'hack'
By Rob Beschizza on Aug 05, 2011 06:12 pm More from the Murdochery of recent weeks: it looks like Piers Morgan, the CNN host who was a tabloid editor at the time but denied any involvement, really does have some explaining to do. He gave an interview in 2006 …
Continue reading → Read in browser Outside Lands 2011 limerick contest: The Winnahs!
By David Pescovitz on Aug 05, 2011 06:07 pm I am pleased to announce that the winners of Boing Boing's Outside Lands 2011 Limerick Contest are MANDELBEN and CJHOWAREYA! Competition was fierce. MANDELBEN and CKHOWAREYA each score a pair of 3-Day Tickets to the Outside Lands festival in San …
Continue reading → Read in browser Sponsor shout out: Watchismo
By Rob Beschizza on Aug 05, 2011 05:58 pm Our thanks to Watchismo for sponsoring Boing Boing Blast, our daily delivery of blog headlines to your inbox. SNEAK PEEK: Watchismo is the first to unveil the pre-release spy shots and offer the new Nixon Rubber 51-30 and Nixon Rubber …
Continue reading → Read in browser Friday Freak-Out: Booker T and the MGs' "Green Onions" (1967)
By David Pescovitz on Aug 05, 2011 05:38 pm [video link] Friday Freak-Out: Booker T and the MGs perform "Green Onions" on the Stax Volt Tour of Norway, 1967. Following this are more smoking numbers by Arthur Conley, Sam and Dave, Eddie Floyd, the Mark-Keys, and, yes, Otis Redding. …
Continue reading → Read in browser HTTPS Everywhere goes 1.0: make your browser support to secure connections when they're available
By Cory Doctorow on Aug 05, 2011 05:13 pm HTTPS Everywhere, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's browser add-on that forces encrypted connections to sites that have the option, has just hit 1.0, 13 months after its first public beta. By using HTTPS Everywhere, you can protect your browsing habits from …
Continue reading → Read in browser 3 things you need to know about biofuels
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Aug 05, 2011 03:30 pm Why care about liquid fuel? There's a reason we use different forms of energy to do different jobs, and it's not because we're all just that fickle. Instead, we've made these decisions based on some combination of what has (historically, …
Continue reading → Read in browser Many US ISPs in epidemic of covert search-hijacking of their customers
By Cory Doctorow on Aug 05, 2011 03:23 pm The Electronic Frontier Foundation worked with UC Berkeley's International Computer Science Institute to uncover a widespread program of search-hijacking by American ISPs. Many US ISPs run covert proxies that redirect certain lucrative search queries (made by customers who believe that …
Continue reading → Read in browser What's it take to get off nuclear power?
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Aug 05, 2011 02:07 pm To get off nuclear power, Germany plans to make its electricity system 80% renewable by 2050. That's not going to be easy. Just to reach the first milestone of that goal—35% renewable capacity by 2020—the country will have to build …
Continue reading → Read in browser Atlas rockets could carry astronauts to space again
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Aug 05, 2011 01:47 pm It looks like Boeing will be the main competitor for Space X in the race to see what U.S. company will provide the commercial space flight services that NASA eventually plans to rely on. Space X has its Dragon capsule, …
Continue reading → Read in browser Write an adventure novel in three days, the Michael Moorcock way
By Cory Doctorow on Aug 05, 2011 01:31 pm Michael Moorcock's tips for writing complete adventure novels in three days are the fruit of his early career, when he was writing novels (including his Elric classics) in three to ten days each. The advice comes from the opening chapter …
Continue reading → Read in browser Lucky Cosmonaut
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Aug 05, 2011 12:52 pm Everybody say, "Hello," to Russian cosmonaut Yury Malenchenko. Hi, Yury! I like this photo because he kind of reminds me of one of those Japanese lucky cats. Image: REUTERS/Sergei Remezov
Read in browser High temperatures change parenting behavior in birds
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Aug 05, 2011 12:38 pm So here's a statistic I'd never heard before: Between 1979 and 2003 years, more Americans died from heat exposure than from hurricanes, lightning, tornadoes, floods, and earthquakes combined. Wow. That comes from Jason Goldman, a scientist and science blogger, who …
Continue reading → Read in browser German cops call airport full-body pornoscanners "useless," EU requires opt out from scanning
By Cory Doctorow on Aug 05, 2011 12:25 pm Bruce Schneier rounds up a series of links about problems with airport full-body "pornoscanners." The German police call them "useless" (35 percent of fliers repeatedly set them off, though they weren't carrying anything dangerous), some scanners are set off by …
Continue reading → Read in browser Dear Mr. Spielberg, please give the raptors feathers
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Aug 05, 2011 12:25 pm "There had better be feathers on the raptors": Dino-blogger Brian Switek's open letter to Steven Spielberg upon the occasion of rumors about the possibility of a Jurassic Park 4.
Read in browser Want to live a long life? Ignore centenarians, watch Seventh Day Adventists
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Aug 05, 2011 12:21 pm If a centenarian jumped off a bridge while eating a bag of jelly donuts and chain-smoking, would you do it, too? That's basically the message in a new column by LiveScience's Christopher Wanjek, which looks at why the people who …
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