Sunday, June 16, 2013

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

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Turkish EU minister: protesters will be treated as terrorists
Happy F-day!
Giant women on trailer in Shinjuku
Cross stitch recreation of a page from the Walking Dead comic book
Metal from 12 year olds
Atoms for Peace play a surprise intimate show in Los Angeles
Xbox One will divide EU into different markets
Facebook releases new post-NSA-Prism-leak privacy settings
Internet companies begin releasing some data on government spying
Wired News publishes encrypted message to Edward Snowden
NYT profiles NSA leaker Edward Snowden
Senators skip classified briefing on NSA spying so they can fly home for Father's Day weekend
Microsoft awarded patent on wearable computing device that transmits data through the human body
Iowa gentleman tells cops he was using lawn mower on neighbors' lawns to chase gopher
The secret behind NSA's Prism program? "Even bigger data seizure."
Brian Eno Caturday
How Google plans to use balloons to deliver broadband to the great unwired
Spying On The Home Front: A 2007 PBS FRONTLINE worth revisiting
Why you should care about surveillance

 

Turkish EU minister: protesters will be treated as terrorists

By Cory Doctorow on Jun 16, 2013 11:17 am

Turkish police used extreme force to eject the protesters from Taksim Square yesterday. Egemen Bağış, Turkey's representative in the EU, gave a televised address in which he said, "[The police] will intervene against anybody who tries to enter Taksim Square, [treating them] as a terrorist." Everyone who enters Taksim Square will be treated as a terrorist: Turkish EU Minister (via Reddit) (Image: "People crossing Bosphprous Bridge (normally closed to pedesterians) headed for Taksim square" Ve halk kopruyu gecti/ @marjinal_hatun)
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Happy F-day!

By Cory Doctorow on Jun 16, 2013 09:12 am

It's Father's Day and time for my annual re-posting of Groucho Marx singing the greatest song dedicated to that occasion of all time.
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Giant women on trailer in Shinjuku

By Mark Frauenfelder on Jun 16, 2013 02:17 am

While I'm waiting here at Narita airport for my flight home, I thought I'd share this photo I took last night in Shinjuku.
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Cross stitch recreation of a page from the Walking Dead comic book

By Mark Frauenfelder on Jun 16, 2013 02:13 am

Walking Dead artist Tony Moore says: "Knowing how long it took me to draw this damn thing in pen and ink, I'm particularly honored and impressed by this painstaking Walking Dead cross-stitch!" ion: A page from The Walking Dead incredibly recreated in cross-stitch
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Metal from 12 year olds

By Cory Doctorow on Jun 15, 2013 09:23 pm

Unlocking the Truth is an an awesome heavy metal band made up of 12-year-old schoolkids who've been playing together since they were five.
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Atoms for Peace play a surprise intimate show in Los Angeles

By Xeni Jardin on Jun 15, 2013 06:20 pm

"This is the rehearsal, right?" Thom Yorke teased the audience last night inside Club Fais Do Do, renamed for the evening "Club Amok" for a surprise/secret Atoms For Peace performance. "You were the lucky ones who got tickets." I was one of the lucky ones who got in. And man, if this was only a rehearsal, those of you who catch them on their forthcoming world tour which kicks off in Paris on July 6 are fortunate souls indeed.
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Xbox One will divide EU into different markets

By Cory Doctorow on Jun 15, 2013 06:00 pm

Microsoft's new XBox One will ship with region-locks that divide the world; yours will only work if it connects to the DRM server from one of 21 selected countries.
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Facebook releases new post-NSA-Prism-leak privacy settings

By Xeni Jardin on Jun 15, 2013 05:26 pm

Parody, obviously. 'shoop: XJ
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Internet companies begin releasing some data on government spying

By Xeni Jardin on Jun 15, 2013 04:54 pm

Facebook and Microsoft have reached a agreements with the U.S. government "to release limited information about the number of surveillance requests they receive," which Reuters' Joe Menn and Gerry Shih report is a partial victory for the companies struggling with "fallout from recent disclosures about the NSA's secret program.
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Wired News publishes encrypted message to Edward Snowden

By Xeni Jardin on Jun 15, 2013 04:46 pm

In the one unencrypted line of this publication, Kevin Poulsen of Wired News writes, "Don't read this if you aren't him.
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NYT profiles NSA leaker Edward Snowden

By Xeni Jardin on Jun 15, 2013 04:40 pm

A lengthy profile in the New York Times of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who recently leaked information about the agency's secret domestic spying program, paints the young man as an self-driven but drifting autodidact.
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Senators skip classified briefing on NSA spying so they can fly home for Father's Day weekend

By Xeni Jardin on Jun 15, 2013 04:36 pm

A briefing offered to US senators by senior intelligence officials on the NSA surveillance programs "failed to attract even half of the Senate, showing the lack of enthusiasm in Congress for learning about classified security programs." [TheHill.com]
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Microsoft awarded patent on wearable computing device that transmits data through the human body

By Xeni Jardin on Jun 15, 2013 04:28 pm

The US Patent and Trademark office has awarded Microsoft a patent on a wearable "electrical device" that uses your arm or finger as "transmission channel" to "transfer data through direct physical contact with another device like a computer, smartphone, or even a game console and controller," writes Gloria Sin at Digital Trends blog.
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Iowa gentleman tells cops he was using lawn mower on neighbors' lawns to chase gopher

By Xeni Jardin on Jun 15, 2013 04:20 pm

As @pourmecoffee tweeted, it's unfair that there's no video to accompany this all-too-brief story of a gentleman in Iowa "who says he was using his lawn mower to chase a gopher." The man has been told to stay home and "sober up," because allegedly, some booze may have possibly been involved maybe.
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The secret behind NSA's Prism program? "Even bigger data seizure."

By Xeni Jardin on Jun 15, 2013 04:17 pm

Amy Fiscus of the AP tweets, "Worried by Prism? It's actually part of a bigger effort. Not worried by Prism?
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Brian Eno Caturday

By Xeni Jardin on Jun 15, 2013 04:05 pm

Did you know that ambient electronic music pioneer Brian Eno starred in an ad for Purina brand cat food, in an alternate universe?
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How Google plans to use balloons to deliver broadband to the great unwired

By Xeni Jardin on Jun 15, 2013 04:02 pm

Wired has a neat story out today from Steven Levy, reporting from New Zealand, on how google plan to use hundreds of high-pressure balloons circling the earth to "provide Internet to a significant chunk of the world's 5 billion unconnected souls, enriching their lives with vital news, precious educational materials, lifesaving health information, and images of grumpy cats."
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Spying On The Home Front: A 2007 PBS FRONTLINE worth revisiting

By Xeni Jardin on Jun 15, 2013 03:15 pm

Given the recent news about the NSA's domestic surveillance programs, this PBS FRONTLINE documentary hour from 2007 is worth revisiting: "Spying On The Home Front.
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Why you should care about surveillance

By Cory Doctorow on Jun 15, 2013 03:03 pm

I got tired of people savvying me about the revelations of NSA surveillance and asking why anyone would care about secret, intrusive spying, so I wrote a new Guardian column about it, "The NSA's Prism: why we should care."
We're bad at privacy because the consequences of privacy disclosures are separated by a lot of time and space from the disclosures themselves.

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Meet SparkTruck, an “educational build-mobile” for the twenty-first century.

 

Dreamed up by a group of Stanford d.school students and funded through Kickstarter, SparkTruck is a mobile maker space currently traveling across the United States. At schools and summer camps and libraries around the country, the SparkTruck team offers workshops to help kids “find their inner maker” as they design and build projects like stamps, stop-motion animation clips, and “vibrobots.”

 

[video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmRKXqDwieY&feature=plcp]

 

This might seem all shiny and new. And it is—but only in part. What’s so striking (and exciting) about SparkTruck is the way it combines old and new. It does so in the tools it gets kids using, which range from pipe cleaners to laser cutters. It does so in its educational approach, which combines cutting-edge (get it?) STEM and design pedagogy with the fundamentals of an old-school shop class. And it does so in its method, which combines the iconic, century-old technology of the bookmobile with the hot new form of the maker space.

 

In doing so, SparkTruck joins a growing number of libraries which are combining time-tested principles (like equal access to information) with new technologies (like 3-D printers), putting in maker spaces and media production labs alongside bookshelves and meeting rooms. As I’ve argued over on bookmobility.org, these combinations make sense because reading and making actually have a lot in common. They’re both creative processes that take existing materials and combine them in new ways. Getting people engaged in those kinds of processes—through imaginative thinking, contemplation, hands-on problem-solving, and collaborative learning—is what both maker spaces and libraries are all about.

 

Taking that commitment on the road with scissors and hammers and 3-D printers and a great big bookmobile-like truck, SparkTruck serves as a laboratory for new approaches, as well as a reminder that trying new things doesn’t have to (and probably shouldn’t!) necessarily mean tossing old ones out.

 

After all, what would those vibrobots be without classically crafty pipe cleaners and tongue depressors? And what would a library be without the creative, participatory, straight-up awesome experience of reading?

 

SparkTruck schedule [sparktruck.org]

How to arrange a visit from SparkTruck [sparktruck.org]

SparkTruck YouTube channel [youtube.com]

 

Signature: --Derek Attig, bookmobility.org

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