The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- SPECIAL FEATURE: I Am Plastic, Too: The Next Generation of Designer Toys
- Wordpress's excellent link-forwarding service for ex-customers
- Mexican Senate pulls proposes pulling out of ACTA
- T-Mobile sneaks "rootkit" into G2 phones - reinstalls locked-down OS after jailbreaking
- Bioshock casemod submerged in mineral oil
- XKCD's Online Communities map, part 2 - the online world, visualized with loads of funny
- The Marker of the Beast
- FBI, DHS, New Orleans cops all ignore citizen's attempts to warn of possible bomb threat
- Alex Halderman's totally epic hack of the DC internet voting system pilot program
- Cryptome pwned by lulz-happy hackers in search of Wikileaks dirt
- Google Street View captures murder in Brazil
- No, LA didn't buy $1bn worth of jetpacks: Fox News falls for Weekly World News bogus headline
- Mexican TV clown host threatens Twitter user
- Ram iPhone Bike Mount + Cyclemeter App
- Glenn Beck swipes his kooky conspiracy theories from kooky conspiracist Alex Jones
- Bizarre anti-thumb-sucking device from 1923
- Jesus in MRI image
- Graphic guide to Facebook portraits
- Gysin Dream Machine app
- Christine O'Donnell "I'm not a witch," the Tim Heidecker remix
- Druids: Mystery, Faith, and Myth
- Hunter S. Thompson's 1958 cover letter for a newspaper job
- DODObag by Rickshaw
- Apollo 13: Mission Control, an interactive theatrical event
- Report: Heroin-snorting "space alien from Sirius" arrested in Russia for sexually abusing cult members
- Tony Curtis was buried with his iPhone
- White House's Tom Kalil on maker culture
- Realistic Pac Man sculpture
- Scientist wins both IgNobel and Nobel prizes
- 18th-century etching of a meteor breaking apart
| SPECIAL FEATURE: I Am Plastic, Too: The Next Generation of Designer Toys Posted: 05 Oct 2010 11:55 PM PDT Here's an exclusive preview of the beautiful new art book, I Am Plastic, Too: The Next Generation of Designer Toys, by Paul Budnitz. Published by Abrams.
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| Wordpress's excellent link-forwarding service for ex-customers Posted: 06 Oct 2010 03:10 AM PDT  Wordpress.com has announced an admirable new feature for customers who want to leave its hosting service: for a fee, they will redirect all incoming visitors to your new site, preserving links to all your existing posts. I'm really impressed with this: it sounds like Wordpress is pretty confident that they can provide a better product than customers can get elsewhere, and if not, they want to make sure that their customers can go where they get the best fit. My guess is that this feature will be used mostly by people who outgrow Wordpress's hosting -- which means that you can start small on their system, and be confident that if you grow, you'll be able to move on without breaking your links. Hello, Goodbye: Offsite Redirect Upgrade (via Hack the Planet)
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| Mexican Senate pulls proposes pulling out of ACTA Posted: 06 Oct 2010 03:13 AM PDT According to this statement (Google translated from Spanish),   |
| T-Mobile sneaks "rootkit" into G2 phones - reinstalls locked-down OS after jailbreaking Posted: 05 Oct 2010 11:48 PM PDT James Losey from New America Foundation writes, "I thought you might be interested in a new 'feature' of the latest Android phone. Officially released tomorrow October 6, some T-mobile stores began selling the HTC G2 yesterday. Within 24 hours, users have discovered that the phone has built-in hardware that restricts what software a device owner might wish to install. Specifically, one of the microchips embedded into the G2 prevents device owners from making permanent changes to the Android operating system, re-installing the original firmware." Newest Google Android Cell Phone Contains Unexpected 'Feature' -- A Malicious Root Kit. (Thanks, James!) (Image: Fuck T-mobile, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from gillyberlin's photostream)
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| Bioshock casemod submerged in mineral oil Posted: 05 Oct 2010 11:39 PM PDT Redditor Sirleechalot built this lovely Bioshock PC by submerging a media center PC in mineral oil (computers run fine submerged in this non-conducting fluid, though maintenance can be a little drippy/oily). The initial impetus was to build a system that ran quietly enough to be in his bedroom, but it took on a life of its own: Bioshock Mineral Oil Media Center Case (via Geekologie)
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| XKCD's Online Communities map, part 2 - the online world, visualized with loads of funny Posted: 05 Oct 2010 11:32 PM PDT  Randall "XKCD" Munroe has updated his legendary "Online Communities" map. Drawing from diverse data-sources, he's laid out a notional map of a world where geographical scale is determined by the size/intensity of community engagement. Filled with tons of sly humor and tiny details, it's a worthy successor to the original. I hope he does a poster of this one, too!
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| Posted: 05 Oct 2010 09:18 PM PDT  "Never sign a deal with the Devil. Unless you've got just the right pen."—R. Stevens of Diesel Sweeties. Each customized Sharpie set is only $6.66 while supplies last. I took real Sanford Sharpie fine tip pens and added Horrorcore lettering by type genius Chris Piascik to make a limited run of 1,000 pairs of totally evil markers. When they're gone, they're gone.He's selling some t-shirts, too. Also? Chris Piascik has a mthrfckng Sharpie tattoo on his arm. That's him, below.
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| FBI, DHS, New Orleans cops all ignore citizen's attempts to warn of possible bomb threat Posted: 05 Oct 2010 09:04 PM PDT "I explained briefly what I was looking at and was transferred to another number. Nobody picked up. I think I left a message, [but I'm not sure because] I often get tired of all those telephone menus and hang up. Nobody called back." —Joseph T. Wilkins, a retired municipal judge in Brigantine, N.J., who noticed a suspicious, large, unattended suitcase in the French Quarter of New Orleans via a live webcam feed. For about six hours, the New Orleans police, the FBI and DHS all ignored his many and varied attempts to say something after he'd seen something.   |
| Alex Halderman's totally epic hack of the DC internet voting system pilot program Posted: 05 Oct 2010 08:58 PM PDT The local government of the District of Columbia has been conducting a pilot project to test an internet-based voting system that would give overseas and military voters a way to download and submit absentee ballots online. Here's a PDF of the system architecture. Before using the system in a real voting process, the public was invited to evaluate its security and usability. That's where J. Alex Halderman of Freedom to Tinker comes in:
An awful lot of meaty details follow, but here's the punchline:
Based on this experience and other results from the public tests, the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics has announced that they will not proceed with a live deployment of electronic ballot return at this time, though they plan to continue to develop the system. Voters will still be able to download and print ballots to return by mail, which seems a lot less risky.Oh, diva snap. Hacking the D.C. Internet Voting Pilot (Freedom to Tinker, thanks Jake)
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| Cryptome pwned by lulz-happy hackers in search of Wikileaks dirt Posted: 05 Oct 2010 08:39 PM PDT  Cryptome.org, John Young's secret-leaking site that preceded Wikileaks by more than a decade, was hacked over the weekend: defaced, and all files deleted. Young is nothing if not prepared and paranoid, so there were backups and the site has since been restored. Wired spoke to the individuals claiming responsibility. They apparently sought and obtained info on the "Wikileaks Insider" who's been spilling internal Wikileaks dirt to Cryptome. The recent Cryptome intrustion may have exposed the identities of whistleblowers and other confidential sources.
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| Google Street View captures murder in Brazil Posted: 05 Oct 2010 09:06 PM PDT Newspapers in Brazil are reporting that a Google Street View camera-outfitted car photographed the scene of an apparent murder. (English robo-translation here; via Gizmodo)   |
| No, LA didn't buy $1bn worth of jetpacks: Fox News falls for Weekly World News bogus headline Posted: 05 Oct 2010 08:18 PM PDT The Fox News show "Fox and Friends" today fell for a fake Weekly World News headline that reported LA's police and fire departments had ordered $1 billion worth of jetpacks. LA Times, Gawker. However: BAT BOY IS FOR REALS.   |
| Mexican TV clown host threatens Twitter user Posted: 05 Oct 2010 04:21 PM PDT Silvia Viñas at Global Voices reports that Victor Trujillo, a television host on the Spanish language Televisa network who plays the character of "Brozo the Creepy Clown," was not amused by a Twitter user's fake account impersonation of Brozo's co-star Marissa Rivera. "You are in danger," the green-wigged clown intoned, in what has since become a widely-circulated web video and a trending Twitter topic (#brozo). His actual words in Spanish to the fake tweeter were,
"Ya estamos sobre tí. Estamos muy cerca de tí." "Ya estás en peligro [...] ya te chingaste."Which means, more or less: We know about you. We're very close to you (we're on to you). Now you've really fucked yourself.
The rhetoric of the narcos, of crime, of the mafia, in the official media. A symptom of social sickness. Symbolic violence as spectacle. Mexico is at war all over the place. What a shame; what a pain; how pathetic. Grow up. Here's one of the earlier accounts in a major news daily in Mexico, at El Grafico. Pepe Flores at the tech blog ALT1040 has a related post (both of these links in Spanish).
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| Ram iPhone Bike Mount + Cyclemeter App Posted: 05 Oct 2010 02:04 PM PDT  I recently bought a RAM iPhone mount for my bicycle, and it has made cycling a much more enjoyable experience. The mount is simple and secure using two strong zip ties and a rubber wrap around the bars. I mounted the iPhone on the stem in the middle of my handlebars. In conjunction with this I purchased the Cyclemeter ($5) iPhone app as it suited my needs the best. In fact, my old bicycle computer is quickly becoming obsolete. All this has changed my cycling habits. Now I get on and press start; it keeps track of where I went, how fast I went and how long it took with maps and graphs. It shows what days I biked on a calendar. When I take the same route it compares my ride to previous times I have followed that route. Everything is stored on the iPhone, but the information is easily uploaded and shared in various ways and formats. -- Mike Polo [Note: This mount is for iPhone 3G and 3Gs. Ram produces mounts specifically for iPhone 4 and other GPS enabled smart phones.--OH] Ram iPhone Bike Mount $14 Available from Amazon Cyclemeter iPhone App- $5  Available from iTunes Read excerpts and comment on this at Cool Tools. Submit a tool.
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| Glenn Beck swipes his kooky conspiracy theories from kooky conspiracist Alex Jones Posted: 05 Oct 2010 01:32 PM PDT Colorful conspiracist Alex Jones accuses ultrawealthy whackjob Glenn Beck of swiping and "twisting" his entertaining theories about the upcoming scary new world order. Alex Jones: Glenn Beck is stealing my conspiracy theories
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| Bizarre anti-thumb-sucking device from 1923 Posted: 05 Oct 2010 03:06 PM PDT  From Popular Science, 1923: "When the child attempts to put the finger, with band and chain attached, into its mouth, the metal parts come in contact with the tongue and roof of mouth. The result is unpleasant, but not painful." Maybe the kids who were given this treatment grew up to become pioneers of the modern primitives body piercing culture. (Via Mostly Forbidden Zone)
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| Posted: 05 Oct 2010 01:31 PM PDT Tammie Cohrs of Greer, South Carolina was recently diagnosed with oral cancer. Inside the MRI machine to see how the cancer was progressing, she began to pray. And whaddyaknow! Jesus appeared in the MRI image! Really though, this should come as no surprise. Two years ago, Jesus's mother showed up in an MRI scan too. Praise pareidolia! From WPSD: "Woman sees Jesus in MRI image" (Thanks, Rob Rader!)
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| Graphic guide to Facebook portraits Posted: 05 Oct 2010 01:00 PM PDT |
| Posted: 05 Oct 2010 01:02 PM PDT   Brion Gysin, one of my favorite artists and influences, was a pioneer of sound poetry and multimedia collage, as well as a painter, calligraphist, artist, and apparently the only man that William S. Burroughs says he "respected." In 1958, Gysin experienced a hallucination caused by the sun flickering through trees and was inspired to develop the Dream Machine, a device meant to induce a dreamlike state though strobing light. According to Gysin, it was the "the first art object to be seen with the eyes closed." (Above left, me with one of Gysin's devices in Paris.) New York City's New Museum recently hosted the world's largest major retrospective of Gysin's work. I'm deeply bummed I missed the show, but the exhibition catalog, Brion Gysin: Dream Machine, is phenomenal. Also, the New Museum released a free Dream Machine iPhone app for a mobile flicker experience. Brion Gysin: Dream Machine app (via Rhizome, thanks Xeni!)
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| Christine O'Donnell "I'm not a witch," the Tim Heidecker remix Posted: 05 Oct 2010 12:57 PM PDT Tim Heidecker and editor Doug Lussenhop of "Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job" have just edited together this little number. The two elements, in case you haven't been following recent events, are wackjob candidate Christine O'Donnell's "I'm You" TV ad, plus WiLl Forte's I'M A DEMON from T&E.
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| Druids: Mystery, Faith, and Myth Posted: 05 Oct 2010 12:07 PM PDT  More than 2,000 years after Druids first emerged as a spiritual practice in Britain, the UK government has officially recognized Druidry as a religion. ""It's nice to have that official recognition," Phil Ryder, chairman of the trustees of the Druid Network told the BBC. "It's not why we applied originally. We applied because we were legally obliged to do so." As an appreciation of Druids everywhere, LIFE published a series of photos from their archives in a slideshow titled "Druids: Mystery, Faith, and Myth." Image above, "Druids at the ruins in Stonehenge, 1978, ready to celebrate the summer solstice."
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| Hunter S. Thompson's 1958 cover letter for a newspaper job Posted: 05 Oct 2010 06:44 PM PDT  In October 1958, a pre-fame Hunter S. Thompson applied for a job at the Vancouver Sun. The Ottawa Citizen recently published the quintessentially-Hunter cover letter, which also appeared in The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967 (The Fear and Loathing Letters, Vol. 1). Here it is: Vancouver Sun Of course if you asked some of the other people I've worked for, you'd get a different set of answers. The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967 (The Fear and Loathing Letters, Vol. 1) (Amazon, thanks Gil Kaufman!)
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| Posted: 05 Oct 2010 10:10 AM PDT  When Adam Savage showed me his DODOcase, a Moleskinesque iPad case, I ordered one immediately. I haven't stopped using it since then. Now there's the DODObag, which is made by Rickshaw Bags (a San Francisco company that Kent Barnes told me about), which makes excellent gear bags. I own a Rickshaw bag that I bring with me everywhere. Built in collaboration with our neighbor and fellow SF Made company, Rickshaw Bags, the DODObag is designed specifically around the DODOcase for iPad. The black exterior and red interior theme pays respect to our first product, the DODOcase classic.DODObag by Rickshaw
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| Apollo 13: Mission Control, an interactive theatrical event Posted: 05 Oct 2010 10:04 AM PDT The Imaginary Foundation blog points us to Apollo 13: Mission Control, an interactive performance where an entire theater is transformed into NASA's mission control room during the historic, nail-biting 1970 flight that the space agency deemed "a successful failure." If you're in Nelson, New Zealand, you can catch the performance later this month during the Nelson Arts Festival. Apollo 13: Mission Control
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| Posted: 05 Oct 2010 10:20 AM PDT 43-year-old Konstantin Rudnyov, who claims to be an alien spiritual master from the star Sirius, was arrested in Russia on charges that he created a "nationwide totalitarian sect that brainwashed and sexually abused members," according to police today. Practices in the ashram reportedly involved orgies in which young female members were coerced into sex with senior members. Oh, and everyone had to turn their property over to the head alien in charge. More in the Moscow Times. Here's the official ITAR-TASS news release about the arrest. This is definitely not the first time Rudnyov has been detained by police. Still more here.
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| Tony Curtis was buried with his iPhone Posted: 05 Oct 2010 09:48 AM PDT MSNBC: "Actor Tony Curtis was buried Monday with a melange of his favorite possessions — a Stetson hat, an Armani scarf, driving gloves, an iPhone and a copy of his favorite novel, Anthony Adverse, a book that inspired his celebrity name and launched a robust film career that spanned decades and genres." (via Gizmodo via John Moe)   |
| White House's Tom Kalil on maker culture Posted: 05 Oct 2010 09:35 AM PDT Following last week's Maker Faire in New York City, the National Science Foundation sponsored a workshop on "Innovation, Education, and the Maker Movement" organized by MAKE founder Dale Dougherty, New York Hall of Science's Margaret Honey, and Tom Kalil from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Tom and I worked together at UC Berkeley many years ago on university initiatives for nanoscience, a domain he had previously brought to the White House when he worked with President Clinton. Now, Tom is actively involved in helping the US Government see the potential of the maker movement and DIY culture in the context of accelerated innovation, economic growth, and, most importantly, education around science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Tom is one of the good guys. O'Reilly Radar posted a transcript of Tom's talk from the "Innovation, Education, and the Maker Movement" conference. From Radar (image from MAKE): "Thomas Kalil: What would education look like after a Maker make-over?"
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| Posted: 05 Oct 2010 09:21 AM PDT  Artist Jaime Margary has been making sculptures based on characters from 8-bit videogames. This is Pakku rotundus. Each piece is based on a classic videogame character as seen through the prism of real-life anatomy. They are rendered in clay, painted with acrylics and sealed in resin to give the appearance of a specimen preserved in formaldehyde. Seen here is a P. rotundus, which is based on Pac Man.Realistic Pac Man sculpture
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| Scientist wins both IgNobel and Nobel prizes Posted: 05 Oct 2010 09:22 AM PDT  This is pretty awesome. Andre Geim won the Nobel Prize in physics this year, for his work with graphene. Ten years ago, Geim won an IgNobel for using magnets to levitate a frog. The point: A friendly reminder that the IgNobel awards are not here to point fingers at the useless and foolish in science, but, rather, to draw attention to studies that sound funny, but often have some serious thought going on behind the guffaws. Geim's IgNobel, for instance, was earned in honor of research that involved using a popular magnet toy to make a frog float. But, that research is centered around serious ideas about magnetic levitation, a phenomenon best known for its application in Maglev trains. One note: Technically, Geim is only the first person to win both awards as an individual. Read the full IgNobel Awards announcement
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| 18th-century etching of a meteor breaking apart Posted: 05 Oct 2010 08:56 AM PDT  This detail is from an etching was done by artist Paul Sandby, based on a watercolor by his brother Thomas. Recently acquired by Harvard's Houghton Library, it depicts a meteor watching party at Windsor Castle.
You can read excerpts from Cavallo's manuscript at the Houghton Library blog. Submitterated by Horace Rumpole
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Plugging a USB wireless modem into a laptop for T-Mobile's broadband services does not mean that T-Mobile can say that Ubuntu Linux is not an approved operating system, or that Skype is not an allowed voice service. Yet when unsuspecting members of the public buy Google's Android G2 at a T-Mobile store, they aren't getting a customizable mobile computer or phone but are instead getting a device where the hardware itself dramatically limits users' right to make changes to their computers and install the operating system of their choice. 
The motherboard and power supply are mounted to an acrylic sheet that sits in the back of the case. The tank is a 5 gallon Marineland tank. I ended up purchasing the mineral oil from ozbo.com. It's primarily used as a horse laxative. I placed a bunch of calls to local vets, but most of them wanted $18+ per gallon (and also thought i had some nefarious plans for their oil). The Big Daddy (ok, i guess Mr.Bubbles is more appropriate) figure was purchased from Amazon. I went to my local pet store for the tank, bubbler, pump, and gravel. For a power switch, i found an old cable from a computer i had built previously that had a jumper connector on it (the kind that would usually plug in from a case power switch) and soldered the other end to a momentary switch (these can be found at radio shack). 
Cohrs said what happened while she was having the MRI scan brought her to tears. "I just had this wonderful experience that I was with Him," Cohrs said. 
Economically -- we are seeing the early beginnings of a powerful Maker innovation ecosystem. New products and services will allow individuals to not only Design it Yourself, but Make it Yourself and Sell it Yourself. For example, Tech Shops are providing access to 21st century machine tools, in the same way that Kinkos gave millions of small and home-based business access to copying, printing, and shipping, and the combination of cloud computing and Software as a Service is enabling "lean startups" that can explore a new idea for the cost of ramen noodles.
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