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HOWTO make a molded portrait-gourd Family Restaurant, film for kids with gay / lesbian parents Canadian cops want to add a spying tax to phone bills to pay for warrantless wiretapping Gun ad: your kids can safely play with this gun Preliminary analysis of Anonymosus-OS: lame, but no obvious malware California is OK TSA Precheck: $100 application fee to skip the song and dance Choreography + EL wire = awesome dance party Copyright Math: the best TED Talk you'll watch all year Using Kickstarter to make fine art without galleries or grand committees or gazillionaires Android screen lock bests FBI Daily Show's Kristen Schaal on GOP attack on women's reproductive rights Anonymosus-OS: an OS for Anons Speech synthesizer in 1K of Javascript Revealed! Kony 2012's sinister Musical Comedy roots The Snowfield: A game of small mercies Synchrotrons explained (with donuts) Laser de-printer lifts ink from paper, leaving it ready to be reused Darth Vader wheezing for ten hours straight Mid-century cat scientists The beautiful surface of the Sun This Explains a Lot Roy Doty illustrates a new book on economics New hypothesis proposes a link between obesity and carbon dioxide Patent troll takes aim at taxpayers Wasteland sequel kickstarted HOWTO make a molded portrait-gourd
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 16, 2012 12:39 pm Instructables member TimAnderson has a great HOWTO for growing molded "portait gourds," a technique from China and would work with other vegetables. He starts with a 3D sculpture of his subject, creates a mold, and then coaxes the veg to grow within the mold's constraints. This mold has a flexible rubber lining which makes it ...
Read in browser Family Restaurant, film for kids with gay / lesbian parents
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 16, 2012 12:00 pm Boing Boing pal and periodic guestblogger Andrea James sends word of a cool and worthy project she's doing, and raising funds for via Kickstarter: "Family Restaurant," a film for children whose moms and/or dads are LGBT. "There are very few family-friendly films where kids with gay or lesbian parents can enjoy a fun story that ...
Read in browser Canadian cops want to add a spying tax to phone bills to pay for warrantless wiretapping
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 16, 2012 12:00 pm Michael Geist, "One of the major unanswered questions about Bill C-30, Canada's lawful access/online surveillance bill, is who will pay for the costs associated with responding to law enforcement demands for subscriber information ('look ups') and installation of surveillance equipment ('hook ups'). I recently obtained documents from Public Safety under the Access to Information Act ...
Read in browser Gun ad: your kids can safely play with this gun
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 16, 2012 09:06 am This undated Iver Johnson ad may just be the most disturbing thing I've ever seen posted on the LiveJournal Vintage Ads group. Not just for the odd spectacle of the little girl playing with a pistol in bed above the legend "Accidental Discharge Impossible," but for the accompanying caption "Papa says it won't hurt us." ...
Read in browser Preliminary analysis of Anonymosus-OS: lame, but no obvious malware
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 16, 2012 02:01 am On Ars Technica, Sean Gallagher delves into the Anonymosus-OS, an Ubuntu Linux derivative I wrote about yesterday that billed itself as an OS for Anonymous, with a number of security/hacking tools pre-installed. Sean's conclusions is that, contrary to rumor, there's not any malware visible in the package, but there's plenty of dubious "security" tools like ...
Read in browser California is OK
By Jason Weisberger on Mar 15, 2012 11:57 pm 
Read in browser TSA Precheck: $100 application fee to skip the song and dance
By Dean Putney on Mar 15, 2012 10:50 pm The TSA has announced a new program rolling out at a few airports that allows selected customers to skip the security lines by checking in at a kiosk and going through a nominal screening, but only after they've paid a $100 application fee and been approved through a background check. The Wall Street Journal reports: ...
Read in browser Choreography + EL wire = awesome dance party
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 15, 2012 10:10 pm Here's Japan's Wrecking Crew Orchestra performing some pretty wonderful dance moves made all the better by their electroluminescent wire garments, which cause them to seemingly wink in and out of existence on the dark stage WRECKING CREW ORCHESTRA 20120208EL (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
Read in browser Copyright Math: the best TED Talk you'll watch all year
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 15, 2012 08:48 pm This may just be the best TED Talk video I've seen: listen.com/Rhapsody founder and extremely funny person (and soon-to-be debut science fiction author) Rob Reid examines the math behind the claims made by the copyright lobby and explains the mindbending awesomeness of the sums used to justify SOPA, PIPA, ACTA and the like. Here's Ars ...
Read in browser Using Kickstarter to make fine art without galleries or grand committees or gazillionaires
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 15, 2012 07:41 pm Molly Crabapple sez, "While cultural institutions, from record labels to newspapers, are crumbling around us, the fine art world has remained relatively unchanged. Medici is The Crowd is an article about how I decided to create large, elaborate, political art without waiting for permission, and to fund it with the speed and populism of the ...
Read in browser Android screen lock bests FBI
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 15, 2012 07:13 pm A court filing from an FBI Special Agent reports that the Bureau's forensics teams can't crack the pattern-lock utility on Android devices' screens. This is moderately comforting, given the courts' recent findings that mobile phones can be searched without warrants. David Kravets writes on Wired: A San Diego federal judge days ago approved the warrant ...
Read in browser Daily Show's Kristen Schaal on GOP attack on women's reproductive rights
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 15, 2012 06:08 pm Here's a transcript of some of Kristen Schaal's Daily Show routine on the current mandatory transvaginal ultrasound disgrace and the national attack on women's reproductive rights: I just flew in from Virginia, and boy is my vagina tired! From the involuntary ultrasound wanding — AM I RIGHT, LADIES? (Beat.) And by the way, why do ...
Read in browser Anonymosus-OS: an OS for Anons
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 15, 2012 04:58 pm A group working under the Anonymous banner has release Anonymosus-OS, a derivative of the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution optimized for doing Anonymous-style stuff, with a bunch of "security testing" tools included in the distro. Given recent revelations about the infected version of the Low-Orbit Ion Cannon, it would be prudent to manually verify all the package ...
Read in browser Speech synthesizer in 1K of Javascript
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 15, 2012 03:51 pm Mathieu 'P01' Henri, a French Web developer, has produced a functional speech synthesizer in 1k of JavaScript. It's an entry in the fourth JS1K competition. JS1K#4 was colliding with our long awaited family vacation. I had very little time to work. Audio was ON this time and I had this tiny speech synthesizer laying around ...
Read in browser Revealed! Kony 2012's sinister Musical Comedy roots
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 15, 2012 03:21 pm From the first time I watched "Kony 2012," I always sensed a link with the storyline of Matt Stone and Trey Parker's Book of Mormon musical. But sweet fancy Moses, I did not know how closely linked the two truly were. Aaron Stewart-Ahn tells us about the video above (which has been taken down by ...
Read in browser The Snowfield: A game of small mercies
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 15, 2012 03:00 pm On Play This Thing, Greg Costikyan reviews The Snowfield, a game developed as a student project at the Singapore MIT GAMBIT Game Lab. It sounds like a very odd and compelling experience: in The Snowfield, you're tasked with gathering up the survivors of a brutal battle on the eastern front in WWII and coaxing them ...
Read in browser Synchrotrons explained (with donuts)
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Mar 15, 2012 02:56 pm Synchrotrons are a type of particle accelerator—a family of machines that includes the famous Large Hadron Collider. Different synchrotrons do different jobs. The Diamond Light Source synchrotron in the United Kingdom focuses on producing high-energy beams of light, which are used to aid all different kinds of scientific research—from microbiology to archaeology. In this short ...
Read in browser Laser de-printer lifts ink from paper, leaving it ready to be reused
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 15, 2012 02:30 pm An experimental printer documented by Cambridge University scientists in a paywalled Royal Society paper is capable of laser-ablating the toner off of sheets of previously printed paper, leaving them ready to be reused. The device uses picosecond pulses of a green laser that passes through the cellulose in the paper, but vaporizes the toner. The ...
Read in browser Darth Vader wheezing for ten hours straight
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 15, 2012 02:30 pm Need ten hours of Darth Vader's mechano-asthmatic wheeze? Look no further, for Murdock129's YouTube video has the soundtrack for your days. 10 Hours of Darth Vader Breathing (via IO9)
Read in browser Mid-century cat scientists
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Mar 15, 2012 02:28 pm What did people do for fun before photoshop? I don't even remember. Please enjoy the entire blog at Tumblr (of course): Cat Scientists of the 1960s. Via Heather Fenoughty
Read in browser The beautiful surface of the Sun
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Mar 15, 2012 02:04 pm Phil Plait linked to this amazing photo of the Sun on the Bad Astronomy blog today. It's incredible. Like nothing I've ever seen before. The photographer is Alan Friedman. Plait explains how Friedman got this look, which is a very nice reminder that space photography is seldom really about "point and click". Alan uses an ...
Read in browser This Explains a Lot
By Amy Seidenwurm on Mar 15, 2012 02:02 pm Noticed this on the street in LA this morning. Anyone know who the artist is? Update: Castro Burger has left us a comment and is the artist behind the poster. Nice work Mr. Burger!
Read in browser Roy Doty illustrates a new book on economics
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 15, 2012 02:00 pm I've been a fan of Roy Doty's ever since I discovered his Wordless Workshop comics for Popular Science magazine, which he's been doing since the 1950s. He started illustrating professionally in 1948 after serving in WWII and at age 90, Roy is showing no signs of slowing down. His illustrations are as fantastic as ever. ...
Read in browser New hypothesis proposes a link between obesity and carbon dioxide
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Mar 15, 2012 01:57 pm Let me preface anything else in this post by clarifying something important. What we are talking about here is a hypothesis—it's not been proven. In fact, it's not even really been tested yet. The studies that will put the hypothesis to the test are currently underway. So please (please, please, please) do not walk away ...
Read in browser Patent troll takes aim at taxpayers
By Rob Beschizza on Mar 15, 2012 01:50 pm Martin Jones patents obvious ideas. A holding company, ArrivalStar, is shaking down cash-strapped cities nationwide over one for public transport scheduling—and they're paying up, to avoid costly litigation. The EFF has launched a campaign to invalidate the patent, and you can help.
Read in browser Wasteland sequel kickstarted
By Rob Beschizza on Mar 15, 2012 01:41 pm Wasteland, the classic post-apocalyptic sandbox RPG, is to receive a sequel a quarter of a century later. "We wanted to make a Wasteland sequel, but didn't have the rights," says creator Brian Fargo of the publishing environment back then. "So we made Fallout instead."
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