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SpyFiles: Wikileaks claims $5B industry spying on mobile, webmail, GPS users, delivers interactive map showing surveillance by country Cory in Zurich next week Defibrillator Toaster EFF to Copyright Office: let my tablets, consoles, and phones go! Your tax dollars at work: misleading, lurid "anti-piracy" ad campaign from US AG and Natl Crime Prevention Council Game Boy Super Mario recreated with 18 million Minecraft blocks Santastic Six: killer mashups for the holidays Edible, incredible electrified Ewok village Kentucky church bans interracial couples: Kathryn Calder: "Turn a Light On" (MP3) 365 rock T-shirts a year Another great Andrew Loomis art book reprinted: Drawing the Heads and Hands Chase exec: we tricked naive borrowers into taking out subprime loans Can Lego be considered art? All new Submitterator! My Flower painting available as a print at Thumbtack Press Why the study of evolution matters Carrier IQ latest TSA agent sues over on-the-job sexual assault San Francisco: Winston Smith studio show and art sale Sad story about a chimp in space Why would a battery burst into flame? Anonymous library paper sculptor returns, and calls it quits 5 Photoshop Disasters to astound and amuse Honors for Under the Poppy: Heat your home with data Snake charmer releases cobras in tax office One of the earliest known examples of math homework Dutch copyright group accused of pirating its anti-piracy anthem, music collecting society boss seeks 33% finders' fee for getting musician paid Some more news about CarrierIQ SpyFiles: Wikileaks claims $5B industry spying on mobile, webmail, GPS users, delivers interactive map showing surveillance by country
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 02, 2011 10:28 am SpyFiles, a new project from Wikileaks and several partner organization, is based on 287 secret documents revealing a campaign of mass spying on users of webmail, GPS, and mobile devices, with this data being sold in a covert, 25-nation global marketplace that Wikileaks claims is worth $5 billion. At present, the underlying documents are not ...
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By Cory Doctorow on Dec 02, 2011 09:02 am I'm coming to Zurich next week to do a series of high-school lectures in connection with the German edition of Little Brother, and while I'm in town, I've scheduled a free lecture, organised by local free culture and Creative Commons activists. It's at 8PM on December 6, at the Kunstraum Walcheturm. Hope to see you ...
Read in browser Defibrillator Toaster
By David Pescovitz on Dec 02, 2011 05:43 am Designer Shay Carmon came up with this fantastic concept for a Defibrillator Toaster "to revive your old bread." (Thanks, Ariel Waldman!)
Read in browser EFF to Copyright Office: let my tablets, consoles, and phones go!
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 02, 2011 05:42 am It's time for the triennial Copyright Office hearings on exemptions to the anti-circumvention measures in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The Copyright Office will entertain submissions on when and how it should be legal to break DRM. In the last round, EFF successfully petititoned the Copyright Officeto legalize jailbreaking iPhones to enable the installation of ...
Read in browser Your tax dollars at work: misleading, lurid "anti-piracy" ad campaign from US AG and Natl Crime Prevention Council
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 02, 2011 12:54 am Nate Anderson reviews the new "lurid" anti-piracy ad from the US Attorney General and the National Crime Prevention Council, and "does for 'piracy' what 'reefer madness' and 'hairy palms' did for an older generation's social ills." The AG included a call on his fellow Americans to turn in their families and neighbors if they think ...
Read in browser Game Boy Super Mario recreated with 18 million Minecraft blocks
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 01, 2011 11:58 pm A trio of Ur-nerds have recreated the Game Boy's Super Mario Land using Minecraft. They laid 18 million blocks to accomplish the feat. It took 500 hours. Each image is a masterpiece in block placement, dropping dyed wool blocks in the game's creative mode within the frame of a massive Game Boy created in the ...
Read in browser Santastic Six: killer mashups for the holidays
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 01, 2011 10:53 pm djBC has released the sixth Santastic collection, a set of holiday mashups from some of the greatest sonic plunderers in the world (earlier efforts). As always, the Santastic mixes are fantastic. If you want my favorites, try Divide and Kreate's Santatage (MP3) (mashing Otis Redding vs The Beastie Boys vs Run DMC); ATOM's Wonderland Walker ...
Read in browser Edible, incredible electrified Ewok village
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 01, 2011 10:32 pm The Infinite Yums created this elaborate, electrified, edible Ewok village with Rice Krispie treat Death Star. The Ewoks are chocolate, the straw thatching is shredded wheat, trees are texturized krispies painted with icing, the platforms are gingerbread... Humble beginnings for this formidable task. A giant ball of Rice Krispie treats, roughly shaped like the unfinished ...
Read in browser Kentucky church bans interracial couples:
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 01, 2011 09:18 pm The Gulnare Free Will Baptist Church in rural Kentucky has banned interracial couples from its congregation, following a visit from the Church secretary's daughter and her black African fiance.
Read in browser Kathryn Calder: "Turn a Light On" (MP3)
By Amy Seidenwurm on Dec 01, 2011 08:40 pm Sound it Out #8: Kathryn Calder: "Turn a Light On" An instant gloomy-day classic, Kathryn Calder's "Turn a Light On" is lush and lovely with enchanting, layered vocals and a child-like tone. The pedal steel guitar makes your heart hurt in the very best way. Kathryn Calder is in the unenviable position of being Neko ...
Read in browser 365 rock T-shirts a year
By Mark Frauenfelder on Dec 01, 2011 08:32 pm Amy Seidenwurm says: Isac Walter has a massive collection of t-shirts, most of them music-related. He puts one on every day, takes a picture of his torso, and posts a story about the shirt on MinorThread.com. We're on day 143 right now and Isac doesn't seem to be running out of "material." He's looking for ...
Read in browser Another great Andrew Loomis art book reprinted: Drawing the Heads and Hands
By Mark Frauenfelder on Dec 01, 2011 08:25 pm The good folks at Titan Books have released a beautiful facsimile edition of Andrew Loomis' highly-sought-after instructional drawing book, Drawing the Head and Hands. Earlier this year Titan released Loomis' Figure Drawing For All It's Worth, which I reviewed here. Before Titan began publishing facsimile editions of Loomis's book, used copies would sell for $100 ...
Read in browser Chase exec: we tricked naive borrowers into taking out subprime loans
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 01, 2011 08:15 pm An award-winning Chase vice-president has gone public with accusations that his bank deliberately tricked naive borrowers into taking out high-commission loans they could never pay back (his team wrote $2B in loans during the subprime bubble), putting the lie to the narrative that subprime was about greedy borrowers taking money they knew they shouldn't: One ...
Read in browser Can Lego be considered art?
By John Baichtal on Dec 01, 2011 08:02 pm In The Cult of Lego, my co-author Joe Meno and I devote a whole chapter to art, both works created with bricks as well as art using more traditional media featuring Lego as the subject matter. Despite the success of museum exhibitions such as Nathan Sawaya's nationally-touring "Art of the Brick", inevitably some people claim ...
Read in browser All new Submitterator!
By Dean Putney on Dec 01, 2011 07:54 pm Submitterator is back and better than ever! We learned a lot from our original public submission system (basically a reader-generated blog), and I've made a few key changes to help you get your cool stuff to the right people at Boing Boing, and make it easier for everyone else to enjoy your submissions too: We ...
Read in browser My Flower painting available as a print at Thumbtack Press
By Mark Frauenfelder on Dec 01, 2011 07:45 pm I love Thumbtack Press, because they make excellent art prints, offer high quality framing of the prints they sell, and pay their artists a very good commission. I've been offering my work at Thumbtack Press for years, and couldn't be more pleased with their service and product quality. Today, they introduced my latest print, Flower, ...
Read in browser Why the study of evolution matters
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Dec 01, 2011 07:24 pm "Teaching science without evolution is like teaching sentence structure without the alphabet." That's a quote from Carin Bondar, one of the awesome scientists interviewed in this video about why evolution needs to be taught in public schools. You'll note that all the scientists in the video happen to be female. That's because it's kind of ...
Read in browser Carrier IQ latest
By Rob Beschizza on Dec 01, 2011 07:23 pm Daring Fireball's front page currently offers a great roundup of stories about Carrier IQ, makers of spyware installed on smartphones by carriers.
Read in browser TSA agent sues over on-the-job sexual assault
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 01, 2011 07:00 pm The culture of groping runs deep at the TSA: Nilda C. Marugame, a TSA agent from Hawaii, claims that she faced sanctions from her superiors when she reported a sexual assault by co-worker who had generated similar complaints from two other women at the job-site. She says she was intimidated into signing an official retraction ...
Read in browser San Francisco: Winston Smith studio show and art sale
By David Pescovitz on Dec 01, 2011 06:44 pm Hand-carved collage master Winston Smith, best known for his iconic logo and album art for the Dead Kennedys, is holding a special studio show and art sale December 9 at Grant's Tomb in San Francisco. Winston says he'll have new and classic original art to "suit any budget." I've been a huge fan of Winston's ...
Read in browser Sad story about a chimp in space
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Dec 01, 2011 06:32 pm The life story of Enos, the second primate to orbit Earth, is extremely depressing. In fact, it's significantly more depressing than the life story of Yuri Gagarin, the first primate to orbit Earth. Which is saying something.
Read in browser Why would a battery burst into flame?
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Dec 01, 2011 06:23 pm In several crash tests, the battery on a Chevy Volt began to heat up or burst into flame. The battery problems happened a few days or weeks after the impact and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating. (One potential factor: NHTSA testers didn't drain the batteries of juice after the crash, which is ...
Read in browser Anonymous library paper sculptor returns, and calls it quits
By David Pescovitz on Dec 01, 2011 06:18 pm (images: Chris Scott/Flickr) In September, Cory posted about the exquisite paper sculptures that an anonymous artist was leaving as gifts in Edinburgh's libraries and museums, along with notes of support for those "special places." Several more sculptures have now turned up, bringing the total to ten and, according to the mystery artist, the end of ...
Read in browser 5 Photoshop Disasters to astound and amuse
By Mark Frauenfelder on Dec 01, 2011 06:16 pm Photoshop Disasters presents a gallery of bizarrely-photoshopped images that made it into print or online. Thought-controlled Air Mouse? Cracks are beginning to appear in the Corner Cubby campaign as child actor complains of interdimensional leakage. Reading is a great way to get ahead. The models for Beachmall are so stunningly beautiful that they have watermarked ...
Read in browser Honors for Under the Poppy:
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 01, 2011 06:11 pm Many congratulations to author Kathe Koja on winning the Gaylactic Spectrum award (a prize given to queer-friendly science fiction and fantasy) for her stellar novel Under the Poppy.
Read in browser Heat your home with data
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Dec 01, 2011 06:08 pm Server farms generate so much heat that they have to run air conditioning year round. That requires energy, which costs money and tends to mean burning more fossil fuels. Meanwhile, in winter, a lot of houses are cold. The people who live there have to turn on the heat, which costs money and tends to ...
Read in browser Snake charmer releases cobras in tax office
By David Pescovitz on Dec 01, 2011 06:04 pm A snake charmer in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh was angry that the government did not grant him a plot of land to keep his reptiles. So he went into the state's tax office and released a slew of snakes, including poisonous cobras. From The Telegraph: Workers stood on chairs and shook table ...
Read in browser One of the earliest known examples of math homework
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Dec 01, 2011 05:42 pm It's stuff like this that makes me love archaeology. Turns out, we can trace the concept of math homework back to at least 2300 B.C.E., in ancient Mesopotamia. In the early 20th century, German researchers found several clay tablets at the site of Šuruppak. (Today, that's basically the Iraqi city of Tell Fara.) Some of ...
Read in browser Dutch copyright group accused of pirating its anti-piracy anthem, music collecting society boss seeks 33% finders' fee for getting musician paid
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 01, 2011 05:40 pm A musician called Melchior Rietveldt was commissioned by the Dutch copyright-lobbying group BREIN to compose an anthem for an "anti-piracy" video. According to Rietveldt, BREIN licensed his work for a single use. However, the film industry has gone on to use the music in those crappy anti-piracy ads they run at the start of DVDs ...
Read in browser Some more news about CarrierIQ
By Cory Doctorow on Dec 01, 2011 05:22 pm the rootkit/spyware that's been discovered on various mobile phones: first, Al Franken asking some pointed questions about it (Go, Al! But come on, you're Mr Net Neutrality, anti-corporatism, and you can't figure out why building a Great Firewall of America to "protect copyright" is batshit insane? Seriously?); second, "Google Experience" phones, like the Nexus S, ...
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