OpenSecrets.org, the website of Center for Responsive Politics has just put over 200 million documents online -- basically the groups' entire archives. Specifically, the data includes info about fundraising, lobbying, personal finance of politicians and information about "advocacy groups" known as 527 organizations. It looks like a treasure trove of information that plenty of politicians and lobbyists probably wish remained hidden behind closed doors.

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An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from the LA Times: "... the myths of Area 51 are hard to dispute if no one can speak on the record about what actually happened there. Well, now, for the first time, someone is ready to talk ... Colonel Hugh 'Slip' Slater, 87, was commander of the Area 51 base in the 1960s. Edward Lovick, 90, featured in 'What Plane?' in LA's March issue, spent three decades radar testing some of the world's most famous aircraft (including the U-2, the A-12 OXCART and the F-117). Kenneth Collins, 80, a CIA experimental test pilot, was given the silver star. Thornton 'T.D.' Barnes, 72, was an Area 51 special-projects engineer. And Harry Martin, 77, was one of the men in charge of the base's half-million-gallon monthly supply of spy-plane fuels."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from the LA Times: "... the myths of Area 51 are hard to dispute if no one can speak on the record about what actually happened there. Well, now, for the first time, someone is ready to talk ... Colonel Hugh 'Slip' Slater, 87, was commander of the Area 51 base in the 1960s. Edward Lovick, 90, featured in 'What Plane?' in LA's March issue, spent three decades radar testing some of the world's most famous aircraft (including the U-2, the A-12 OXCART and the F-117). Kenneth Collins, 80, a CIA experimental test pilot, was given the silver star. Thornton 'T.D.' Barnes, 72, was an Area 51 special-projects engineer. And Harry Martin, 77, was one of the men in charge of the base's half-million-gallon monthly supply of spy-plane fuels."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The UK has taken great strides towards being one of the most surveilled societies on Earth, and cops in Manchester are doing their part by attaching CCTV cameras to Smart cars (via Boing Boing). They deploy the vehicles at intersections to catch distracted drivers, they claim, filming cars as they pass by, then reviewing the footage later to determine if drivers are talking on mobile phones, putting on makeup, or performing other distracting activities. Offending drivers then get a letter in the mail, usually with a fine. Police say the measures "are reasonable, proportionate and fair in light of the fact that we are trying to save lives." Is it that likely the cameras will actually save lives? The safety argument when applied to traffic cameras generally seems suspect, and so if that goal's out of reach, how reasonable is the surveillance?

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Over at WIRED's Threat Level blog, David Kravets writes,

President Barack Obama is tapping another RIAA attorney into the Justice Department. Monday's naming of Ian Gershengorn, to become the department's deputy assistant attorney of the Civil Division, comes more than a week after nearly two dozen public interest groups, trade pacts and library coalitions urged the new president to quit filling his administration with lawyers plucked from the Recording Industry Association of America. The move brings to five the number of RIAA lawyers Obama has appointed to the Justice Department.

Obama Taps Fifth RIAA Lawyer to Justice Department (blog.wired.com/27bstroke6 via @seanbonner)

(Image: Joi Ito). Blogger, photographer, tech investor, WoW guild overlord, Creative Commons CEO, and periodic Boing Boing Video guest star Joi Ito recently became a part-time resident of Dubai. I've followed his explorations of that city-state with much interest, and have been wondering what he thinks about the current flood of negative news coverage of Dubai amid the econopocalypse. Last week, for instance, I blogged this piece by Johann Hari in the UK Independent which opens with a vignette about a European expat living in her car, and proceeds to paint a really dark picture of what life is like there now. Joi has written a blog post which isn't solely a response to that piece, but more a reaction what seems to be a broader backlash in the press -- a backlash Joi feels is not fair or reality-based. A snip from his post:

I'm still new to the region so I can't speak definitively as a native, but I do know that the picture that is sketched is pretty biased and I think could be rightly called "bashing". As far as I can tell there is a crunch going on, just like everywhere else, and the government and businesses are trying to figure out what to keep and what to shut down. There are a lot of solid businesses and a lot of solid business people in Dubai and like anywhere else, consolidation and downsizing is taking its toll.

Having said that, the parking lots are not full of homeless foreigners and dumped cars. The mood is the same, if not maybe slightly more upbeat than the US or Japan these days. Instead of taking an hour and a half to get across town, it takes half an hour, instead of 3 days in advance reservations for the lounge/bar at The Address, it's 2 days and you can usually get a table at the nice restaurants with less than a hour wait now... usually. The real estate and development part of Dubai seems to be getting hit the hardest, but it looks the shipping and "the hub of the Middle East" parts of Dubai seem to be doing OK.

I don't want to appear like I'm defending human rights offenders. As a board member of Global Voices, WITNESS and a supporter of a number of Human Rights organizations, I spend a TON of time on human rights issues. We NEED to talk about human rights. However, human rights issues are resolved by understanding how and what kind of pressure to put on who in order to cause the change. While broad understanding of human rights is important, I don't find that sprinkling them on articles as part of a negative press pile-on is really, comparatively speaking, that productive.

Dubai bashing and 'what-aboutery' (Joi Ito)

You may also want to read this "Dubai Bashing" post on Desert Blogger.

Today the nonpartisan watchdog group Center for Responsive Politics announced the release of some 200 million data records from its archive "to the hands of citizens, activists, journalists and anyone else interested in following the money in U.S. politics." Snip from the press release:

The following data sets, along with a user guide, resource tables and other documentation, are now available in CSV format (comma-separated values, for easy importing) through OpenSecrets.org's Action Center at opensecrets.org/action/data.php:

* CAMPAIGN FINANCE: 195 million records dating to the 1989-1990 election cycle, tracking campaign fundraising and spending by candidates for federal office, as well as political parties and political action committees. CRP's researchers add value to Federal Election Commission data by cleaning up and categorizing contribution records. This allows for easier totaling by industry and company or organization, to measure special-interest influence.

* LOBBYING: 3.5 million records on federal lobbyists, their clients, their fees and the issues they reported working on, dating to 1998. Industry codes have been applied to this data, as well.

* PERSONAL FINANCES: Reports from members of Congress and the executive branch that detail their personal assets, liabilities and transactions in 2004 through 2007. The reports covering 2008 will become available to the public in June, and the data will be available for download once CRP has keyed those reports.

* 527 ORGANIZATIONS: Electronically filed financial records beginning in the 2004 election cycle for the shadowy issue-advocacy groups known as 527s, which can raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, labor unions and individuals.

OpenSecrets.org Goes OpenData (Via Clay Shirky)

mlinksva writes "A Wikipedia community vote is now underway on migrating to Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike as the main content license for Wikimedia Foundation projects. This would remove a legal barrier to reusing Wikipedia content (now under the Free Documentation License, intended for narrow use with software documentation, because Wikipedia started before CC existed) in other free culture projects and vice versa."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Kevin Kelly has been compling a list of quotes he's found online. Kevin and I have the same sense of humor and reaction to certain kinds of ideas, so I found these fascinating. Here are a few:

"Most of them seemed to be Twittering the conference as they went, and following each other's Twitter feeds. Surreal moment: At one point, the guy sitting closest to me was reading a blog post containing a photo of the guy sitting immediately behind him." -- Owen Thomas

"As you make a prototype, assume you are right and everyone else is wrong. When you share your prototype, assume you are wrong and everyone else is right." - Diego Rodriguez

"The World Wide Web was precisely what we were trying to PREVENT-- ever-breaking links, links going outward only, quotes you can't follow to their origins, no version management, no rights management." – Ted Nelson

"Creating your own blog is about as easy as creating your own urine, and you're about as likely to find someone else interested in it." -- Lore Sjöberg

"This is my long-run forecast in brief: The material conditions of life will continue to get better for most people, in most countries, most of the time, indefinitely. Within a century or two, all nations and most of humanity will be at or above today's Western living standards. I also speculate, however, that many people will continue to think and say that the conditions of life are getting worse." -- Julian Simon

narramissic writes "Sun Microsystems' chief open source officer, Simon Phipps, said in an April 11 blog post that Google committed a major transgression by only including support for a subset of Java classes in its App Engine development platform. 'Whether you agree with Sun policing it or not, Java compatibility has served us all very well for over a decade,' Phipps wrote. 'That includes being sure as a developer that all core classes are present on all platforms. Creating subsets of the core classes in the Java platform was forbidden for a really good reason, and it's wanton and irresponsible to casually flaunt the rules.' Phipps characterized his remarks as non-official, saying: 'This isn't something I could comment on on Sun's behalf. My personal comments come purely from my long association with Java topics.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When Alice and I got married last autumn, we received many wonderful gifts from our friends, but one of the absolute standouts came from John McDaid and his family. John -- a brilliant, award-winning science fiction writer -- wrote a story for us called "(Nothing But) Flowers," a sad, haunting, hopeful post-apocalyptic tale that we both read with delight and wonder on our honeymoon. Now John has released the story as a Creative Commons download (natch!), and you can read it too.

Every afternoon the rains, as they had for generations, swept in from the saltlands to the west and drove the scavengers into the shelter of the ruins ringing the lagoon. The sky grayed, and wind, pungent with ozone and canebrake, flung stinging flights of droplets into the dank concrete holes.

The Fox Man ran from squat to squat, warning. "Big storm coming." He wore an outfit of scraggy orange fur, scabrous and holed, and as he pranced past, fat raindrops spattered his costume to a blotchy patchwork. Women set out plastic jugs, gathered utensils, and shoveled coals from cooking fires into logs to hustle indoors. Naked children danced in the puddles.

Donal paid no mind to either the storm or the Fox Man, but he always had to smile at that fancy outfit, in a World of loincloths and grass skirts. To Donal, the costume looked more like a dog, though for effect the Fox Man -- or someone who owed him a favor, he was no Hunter -- had hung a poorly preserved fox head from a leather necklace. All Donal wore was a deerskin belt in which was tucked a roughly hammered machete. His dozen braves followed behind like ducklings, spread out in a widening wake; the first rank had knives, as befitting his sidemen, but Donal alone carried a blade longer than his hand.

(Nothing But) Flowers

We've discussed in the past the neat little trick of some underhanded lobbying groups in DC who run down a list of random "interest groups" and get them to sign on in "support" of some bill or another, without having any knowledge or real interest in the matter. The key quote from that article was: "You go down the Latino people, the deaf people, the farmers, and choose them.... You say, 'I can't use this one--I already used them last time...' We had their letterhead. We'd just write the letter. We'd fax it to them and tell them, 'You're in favor of this.'"

Well, it appears that the same thing is happening with patent reform. Wired has done a little digging, and was curious why an anti-communist Hungarian group, the Minutemen (vigilante border guards), and various religious groups have suddenly come out against patent reform. In pretty much all cases, the groups don't seem knowledgeable at all about the actual issues, and were basically told to "sign on" after being given a one-sided presentation that falsely claimed that patent reform was designed to harm American inventiveness and help foreign companies. The best explanation, however, goes to Laszlo Pasztor, the 87-year-old "honorary chairman" of the National Federation of American Hungarians, who is very much opposed to patent reform, though he seems rather confused why:

"It was in Chicago or Detroit, I can't remember. Somebody brought this up, I don't know for what reason... So I gave them permission to use my name."

But, then it gets better. Wired asked Pasztor if it could speak to others in his group that were more knowledgeable about the issue, when Pasztor admitted that the group was being disbanded, but:

"I am a 87 and a half years old," he explained. "And our treasurer is 91 years old. Our chairman, who is a Roman Catholic priest, is so busy working on church issues in Ukraine and Slovakia, it is impossible to reach him."

Pasztor volunteered to get us more information once he reaches Washington. "I will try to reach the still living members of the board," he said.

Nice coalition against patent reform there...

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San Francisco prankster and art car artist Tom Kennedy drowned yesterday at the city's Ocean beach. What a tragedy. He will be missed. His friend John Law wrote an obituary over at Laughing Squid. Goodbye To Tom Kennedy: Art Car Artist, Activist, Teacher & Prankster

TED is running biologist Bonnie Bassler's TED talk about how bacteria "talk" to each other, "using a chemical language that lets them coordinate defense and mount attacks. The find has stunning implications for medicine, industry -- and our understanding of ourselves."

Bonnie Bassler: Discovering bacteria's amazing communication system

esocid writes "Back in 2005, the MPAA hired Robert Anderson, a former associate of TorrentSpy's owner, to illegally obtain internal emails and trade secrets. He did so by routing the email from the internal server to his own Gmail account. He subsequently sold 34 pages of stolen information for $15,000 to the MPAA. TorrentSpy owner Justin Bunnel sued them for spying, but however lost the case due to a ruling that stated it was not illegal since the information was not intercepted under the Wiretap Act. The EFF called this decision a 'dangerous attempt to circumvent privacy laws,' since it implies that the unauthorized interception of anyone's personal email is legal. The appeal could have ramifications for MPAA president Dan Glickman, as the decision is expected around the time of his contract renewal."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Turns out, Firefox 3.1 is being renamed 3.5 due to all the new stuff that's being added. I'm particularly excited about this release for further progressive enrichment ammo, namely: @font-face for downloadable fonts, -moz-box-shadow and text-shadow (since Webkit has those as well) and more. #

talien79 writes "Taxing video games has a storied history in state legislatures. The reality is that video games, violent or otherwise, simply make too much money to be stopped. But taxing them is a viable compromise, a 'sin tax' of sorts similar to that levied on cigarettes. This article reviews the time-honored tactic of politicians pandering to their base: taxing violent video games."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Artist Pat Riot launched his website, Popular Vulture, featuring a wonderful gallery of collage art baseball cards.

The folks at Becausewecan, Oomlout, and others are all a-twitter because Shopbot has opened up their CNC control code, dubbed OpenSBP. Here's what they say about it on the new OpenSBP site:

OpenSBP® is a syntax standard for the toolpath and instruction code used to control CNC machines and digital fabrication tools. As described here, it is in the public domain and freely available for use on any equipment. It may be generated and exported by any software for use on digital fabrication tools.

The OpenSBP Group
The OpenSBP Group is composed of CNC software companies, CNC tool manufacturers, and users supporting the development of this open syntax standard for the toolpath and instruction code used to control CNC machines and digital fabrication tools. The group seeks to develop a standard syntax that is easy for human users to read, is readily implemented by different controllers, and offers more flexibility and extensibility than legacy G-code. OpenSBP® is freely available for use in any CNC or digital fabrication system and companies. The current certification process is described on the Licensing page. All users are invited to participate in the OpenSBP Group community.

The core coding format for OpenSBP® was developed by ShopBot Tools, Inc for use on ShopBot CNC routers. It has become attractive to other developers because of its simple, straightforward, and human-readable approach to machine control. ShopBots read g-code as well as OpenSBP but believe that OpenSBP is the most useful and efficient format for anyone not dependent on g-code for legacy reasons.

ShopBot has contributed the syntax, along with full documentation and support resources, to the public domain and it is available on this site. ShopBot encourage the use of OpenSBP® in any CNC tool or digital fabrication product and will continue to work with the OpenSBP Group and community of users on its development. The OpenSBP Group plans to develop an Advisory Board to establish general guidelines for using and expanding the OpenSBP® format and syntax, for managing certification, and for developing supporting documentation including helpful documentation for creating post-processors for OpenSBP®.

OpenSBP

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Open source hardware | Digg this!

Some new internet regulations recently went into effect in South Korea, forcing sites with more than 100,000 users per day to confirm users' personal information before they upload content or leave comments, so they can ensure people post content under their real names. The cutoff was lowered from sites with 300,000 daily users, and the new, lower bar caught YouTube Korea. But instead of complying with the system, Google has instead disabled uploading and comments on its Korean site (via PaidContent). Google's stance on censorship of its search results in China garnered it a lot of bad press; the fact that YouTube Korea lags behind other local video sites in popularity probably made this latest decision a bit easier. Apparently, though, people can easily get around the ban by using versions of YouTube aimed at other countries -- highlighting the frivolity of these sorts of laws given the global nature of the internet. Unless countries want to go as far as setting up Great Firewalls of their own, users will easily circumvent the rules, should they so desire.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Neil Young's latest album, Fork in the Road, is entirely about his electric car, which he calls the Lincvolt.

The songs on the album are an emotional response to the current social and ecological questions facing the world’s population. Young has been an activist his entire career, and over the past few years has become involved in developing different fuel possibilities. Along with Johnathan Goodwin, their LINCVOLT project using alternative energy to power Young’s 1959 Lincoln Continental is now finished.

Mt. Holly Mayor Mike Haeg says:

Visitor's to Minneapolis often remark about how much drinking goes on here.

They point out the few remaining buildings with any character downtown (There are really only one half a blocks worth left) and remark, "What happens in there?" but seldom wander inside.

And I'm glad.

Because, I tend to tipple in these places, to get away from the suits, the college kids, the convention goers, and the suburban sports fans. I enjoy cheap, stiff drinks, earnest conversation, and little or no distraction from either. It's a slice of heaven.

If I had a time machine, I would go back to skid row. Perhaps I'd see my grandpa brawling outside The Sourdough. He worked for the railroad. And from what I hear, he liked to get into his cups.

Enjoy this little slice of permanent happy hour. I hope it makes you as thirsty as it makes me.

Down on Skid Row by Johnny Rex

snydeq writes "Despite the productivity promises of Apple's forthcoming 3.0 firmware update, jailbreaking should continue to push the iPhone's productivity envelope, as users increasingly demand the Holy Grail of smartphone power use: applications that run in the background, InfoWorld reports. Copy and paste, video recording and streaming, Internet tethering, and content search are just a few of the features over which iPhone users have sought to jailbreak their devices — a practice Apple itself has done little to crack down on. Jailbreak apps circumvent hardware and software restrictions that Apple says ensure a consistent, responsive user interface and optimal battery endurance. In particular, jailbroken phones can run apps in the background, a capability Apple reserves for its own apps but prohibits in third-party programs. Jay Freeman, creator of the Cydia iPhone installer and Cydia Store, however, believes a free-market approach is the best way to satisfy power users' demands for features without compromising the performance of their iPhones. And given Apple's App Store overcrowding, it seems likely that jailbroken phones and app venues like Cydia Store will continue to be popular with iPhone customers and developers, even after the 3.0 firmware ships."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

G4 did a pretty decent segment on steampunk, centered on our friends at Abney Park and current MAKE cover spokesgentleman Jake von Slatt. I like Morgan Webb's description of it as "Goth for engineers."

[Note to Steampunk Haters: Scroll along, nothing to see here. Same old, same old.]

From MAKE magazine:

Check out MAKE, Volume 17: The Lost Knowledge issue!

Buy your copy in the Maker Shed
Subscribe to MAKE
Access the Digital Edition (if you're already a subscriber)

In Volume 17, MAKE goes really old school with the Lost Knowledge issue, featuring projects and articles covering the steampunk scene -- makers creating their own alternative Victorian world through modified computers, phones, cars, costumes, and other fantastic creations. Projects include an elegant Wimshurst Influence Machine (an electrostatic generator built entirely from Home Depot parts), a Florence Siphon coffee brewer, and a teacup-powered Stirling engine. This special section also covers watchmaking, letterpress printing, the early multimedia art of William Blake, and other wondrous and lost (or fading) pre-20th-century technologies.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Makers | Digg this!

Over at Orange Crate Art, Michael Leddy found these terrific Charles Dickens cigarette cards in the New York Public Library's Dickens' Gallery online collection.

I need to keep up with my Mind Hacks posts! A few days ago, Vaughan stumbled upon a case study in a medical journal describing a stroke patient who lost control of his hand. He ended up with "alien hand syndrome" in which his hand apparently engaged in public masturbation outside of his control. From Mind Hacks:

We tend to think of the cognitive impairments after brain injury as the most disabling - things like loss of memory or speech or language impairment, but we often neglect what we might call social impairments.

Especially when the effect is embarrassing, these can have just as strong an impact because many people massively restrict their lives to prevent causing social discomfort to themselves or others.

Involuntary masturbation in alien hand syndrome

In our various debates about immigration policy in the US, we here have always been in favor of a much more permissive immigration policy for skilled immigrants, noting that skilled immigrants have been shown to create more jobs rather than "take them away." For some reason, too many folks incorrectly think that jobs are a zero-sum game, and if a foreigner takes a job, it means one fewer job for Americans. That's wrong in so many ways that it's difficult to take seriously anyone who makes such a claim. That said, it would be interesting to see what even those opposed to expansions of existing skilled worker immigration plans think about Paul Graham's new suggestion of a special startup founder visa, that would allow 10,000 immigrants into the country, but only if they're starting their own company. Thus, they wouldn't be "taking" anyone else's job, since the job they'd be creating wouldn't exist otherwise -- they'd be creating it from scratch. Such a visa would encourage more entrepreneurial activity, and create more startups that should (in all likelihood) end up creating a lot of new jobs as well -- including a few that might go to those people whining about foreigners "stealing" their jobs...

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AndreV writes "A University of Waterloo in Ontario engineering research team has developed the world's first flying micro-robot capable of manipulating objects for micro-scale applications, which include micro-assembly of mechanical components, handling of biological samples and even microsurgery. It moves around and manipulates objects with micro-grippers, remotely controlled by a laser-focusing beam (heating the pincers with a laser opens them; when the laser is turned off, they cool and close). Its magnetic drive mechanism controls the field using continuous feedback from positioning sensors in order to position the 'bot. 'It can enter virtually any space and can be operated in a sealed enclosure by a person outside,' the project leaders says, 'which makes it useful for handling bio-hazardous materials or working in vacuum chambers and clean rooms.' The video of the contraption shows it floating in mid-air."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Brain Ads offers a free "telepathic ad" in exchange for a donation. Not only will you be able to "reach more people than any conventional ad," but you can also "reach people in any time zone." According to the founder, "Your donation will be used for treatment of my condition, and for my own pleasure,which includes making donations to various charities." From the About page:

It has been a long journey to discover that people were reading my mind, and although I came to think this already 7 years ago, everyone denied it. I was even given drugs without my knowledge. It all came down to trusting myself and accepting what I was experiencing.

Slowly I have explored the repercussions that having this ability has had on my life. Consequently, I also began to understand how other people had been using my ablity for their own personal, financial and emotional purposes.

As I realized that TV shows were following my daily thoughts and stores began bringing products I had been wishing for, it finally dawned on me that they were not just teasing me, they were actually getting more viewers and selling more products!

Everyone seemed to be getting a share of the bounty except me!

Brain Ads (via Mind Hacks)

Joel Johnson has been taking some time off from the A/V club to work on the Dork Yearbook, a collection of poignant photos of riot nrrrds celebrating our geek childhoods. (Did you submit yours?) At top, Project Runway contestant and fashion hacker Diana Eng. Below Diana is Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak with one of his science fair projects. As Joel points out, "Dorks always mess with these things in school but it never goes anywhere in real life." Dork Yearbook

sausaw writes "I recently had to write code in a hot dusty room for 20 days with temperatures near 107F (~41C); having nothing to sit on; a 64 Kbps inconsistent internet connection; warm water for drinking and a lot of distractions and interruptions. I am sure many people have been in similar situations and would like to know your experiences."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've seen way too many situations where modern technology has shown how ridiculous certain rules and regulations are. The latest involves the NCAA apparently freaking out about students at certain colleges setting up Facebook groups pleading with high-profile high school sports students to attend their universities. According to the NCAA such "recruiting" violates its rules that forbid trying to influence student athletes over which college to attend. Because of this, the NCAA has pushed the universities to reign in students, to the point that NC State sent one of its students a cease-and-desist, threatening "further action" if he didn't take down a Facebook group trying to attract a student athlete. The folks who sent the cease-and-desist admit that it's ridiculous, but they had to do so due to the NCAA pressure. They're hoping that the NCAA will back down on this:

"I think nationally the NCAA needs to address further Facebook and how these groups play a part in recruiting. Is it realistic for us to be able to monitor them? What harm is a group like this causing? But as the legislation stands right now, this is the position we have to take."

Of course, this is the same NCAA that has tried to limit reporters from live-blogging sporting events (though, it's done little to enforce those rules), so it would come as no surprise if it chose to continue down this path.

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Here is a video stroboscopy of Mel Blanc's vocal cords as "the man of a thousand voices" does Bugs Bunny, Barney Rubble, Pepé Le Pew, and other favorites. (Thanks, Tara McGinley!)

The Kyoto Box is a cardboard box, with an interior that's painted black, aluminum foil-covered top panels, and covered with clear acrylic. It gets hot enough to boil water. Its inventor, Kenyan-based Jon Bohmer, won a £51,000 prize from the Forum for the Future.

The box will be produced in a factory in Nairobi. He told CNN: "This took me about a weekend, and it worked on the first try. It's mind-boggling how simple it is."

Inventor turns cardboard boxes into eco-friendly oven

Smith House Toy and Auction Company offered a bunch of old metal toy robots from Japan. The winning bids are between $1000 and $6000.

Circa 1955. Advances with walking motion as arms swing. Gun tip and springs are original. The bottom edge of his jacket has some factory touchup. Box bottom has several tears. The box top has several light creases and a small stain of some sort over the word "Explorer" that may be removable.

Winning Bid $ 6,328.00

(Levonidas@gmail.com has one of these for sale if you are interested.)

Smith House Toy and Auction Company

gubm writes "Nearly one and a half years after making a stunning entry into the global supercomputer list with Eka, ranked as the fourth fastest supercomputer in the world, Computational Research Laboratories (CRL), a Tata Sons' subsidiary, has succeeded in creating a new market for supercomputers — that of offering supercomputing power on rent to enterprises in India. For now, for want of a better word, let us call it 'Supercomputer as a Service.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Curiosity creator Elizabeth McGrath has a show of exquisite new sculptures opening Wednesday at Sloan Fine Art in New York City. The exhibition, titled Shadowless Summer, runs until May 9. You can also view the adorably dark menagerie of odd creatures online. (Seen here, Boxer, 54" x 54" x 16", mixed media.) For even more, check out Hi-Fructose's behind-the-scenes peek and interview with Liz McGrath. Congratulations to Liz on her first NYC solo show!

The Zimbabwean newspaper posted billboards, flyers, and posters made from Zimbabwean dollars. From the Zimbabwean Newspaper's Flickr stream:

Trillion dollar flyers and posters. A trillion dollar hand-out. To highlight the plight of Zimbabwe and the cause of the ‘Zimbabwean Newspaper’ we handed out trillions of dollars of worthless Zimbabwean money stamped with provocative messages and a call for support for the Zimbabwean newspaper, we also turned the money into giant posters, with trillion dollar tear-offs.

Zimbabwean Newspaper on Flickr (Thanks, Alex Pang!)

On Sunday, I was on a panel about steampunk at the Eastercon in Bradford with Tim Powers, one of the original creators of steampunk literature (see his Anubis Gate). Halfway through, Powers mentioned casually that he came to write a science-fictional book influenced by Victorian England after reading, London Labour and the London Poor , a classic text by Henry Mayhew. Powers said that the book was KW Jeter's (Jeter coined the term "steampunk") and that it was passed around to both Powers and James Blaylock, three friends whose works were, arguably, the first steampunk novels ever written.

Powers said words to the effect of, "After reading this book, I realized that I had a whole novel's worth of research right there." It struck me that I'd never heard this story before, and that here, in this book, there was an important origin story about one of the major ways that an entire genre of literature, making, film and comics came into being.

I've just ordered my copy. Can't wait to read it.

London Labour and the London Poor

Aaudio Imports is selling $39 gold plated fuses for sound system equipment. The description on the website reads, in part:

Fuses always carry high electric current thereby causing metal fatigue. This would then adversely alter the conductivity behavior of the fuse element and hence the performance of the equipment.

A CNET reviewer says "the fuses did make a difference. The sound was fuller, weightier, and the stereo imaging was more 3D with the fuses in the speakers."

As Windell and Lenore of Evil Mad Scientist Labs say, "Yet another reason for double-blind studies."

N!NJA writes "Two major themes of our time — the desire to achieve energy independence and the furor over public bailouts — have collided in the drama surrounding swanky electric carmaker Tesla. Late last year, a New York Times column whipped Silicon Valley innovators and bailout-weary taxpayers into a frenzy. Valley professor and writer Randall Stross wrote that Tesla was hoping for government money to produce its cars, which only the very wealthy could afford. It wasn't exactly true, since the loan was intended to produce the $50,000 Model S sedan, not the $109,000 Roadster. Still, Stross called it a risky, waste of taxpayer money that would only benefit the wealthy and bailout VCs who'd sunk money into the money-losing company. Never mind, Tesla has developed two cars on less than $200 million--compared to the $1 billion General Motors spent developing the now-deceased EV1."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On Making Light, Patrick Nielsen Hayden weighs in on the bizarre #amazonfail trainwreck (in a nutshell, Amazon has made pretty much every book in its database with any kind of queer content invisible to lots of different kinds of searches on the basis that these have "adult" content -- including books like Heather Has Two Mommies).

Patrick advances a pretty plausible theory for how Amazon might have come to do this astoundingly stupid, offensive thing.

(1) Sometime in the middle-distance past--maybe a couple of months ago, maybe a year, it doesn't matter--somebody decided that it would be a good idea to make sure that works of straight-out pornography (or, for that matter, sex toys) didn't inadvertently show up as the top result for innocuous search queries. (The many ways that this could happen are left as an exercise for Making Light's commentariat.) A policy was promulgated that "adult" items would be removed from the sales rankings and thus rendered invisible to general search.

(2) Sometime more recently, an entirely different group of people were given the task of deciding what things for sale on Amazon should be tagged "adult," but in the journey from one department to another, and from one level of the hierarchy to another, the directive mutated from "let's discreetly unrank the really raunchy stuff" to "we'd better be careful to put an 'adult' tag on anything that could imaginably offend anyone." Indeed, as Teresa pointed out, it's entirely possible that someone used a canned list of "adult" titles supplied from outside, something analogous to the lists of URLs sold by "net nanny" outfits, which would account for the newly-unranked status of works like Lady Chatterley's Lover. (As one net commenter observed, "What is this, 1928?")

Amazon's very bad day

I just found these gorgeous retro Raymond Chandler editions from Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin UK. They're little, pulp-sized hardcovers with brilliant, pulpy covers and jacket-copy and spines, and they make a great set spine-out or face-up.

Retro Chandler editions from Hamish Hamilton

Katie sez, "Just wanted to let you guys know about a free event coming up in NYC that falls in line with so much of what gets posted on this site. Open Everything NYC will be happening this Saturday, April 18 at UNICEF House in NYC. It's free, we have some great speakers lined up, and registration is still open."

Open Everything (global site) is a collection of events scattered all over the world, organized by ordinary people just like you. The purpose of the event is to explore and discuss 'open'. The interpretation of the idea is in the hands of attendees, and each event differs from the next.

Let there be no confusion, Open Everything is not a tech conference. There is much more to 'open' than technology, part of the goal of the event is to bring the less known aspects of 'open' to the attention of the general public.

At Open Everything NYC 2009 there will be two invited guest speakers and a number of open sessions left in the hands of attendees. Feel free to come prepared with a topic to share, discuss, or present. Also feel free to act spontaneously and lead a group discussion with no preparation at all. The magic of the event is that it is open and we're all free to contribute as we desire.

Open Everything NYC, 18 April 2009 (Thanks, Katie!)

I love this social robotics experiment from a student at NYU's ITP: Tweenbots are are simple robots bearing a flag with their destinations. Random humans they encounter in the street have to pick them up and aim them in the right direction. As Schneier noted, it's a testament to the level-headedness of New Yorkers that none of them got all Bostonian on the cute little bots and called out the bomb squad.

Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.

Given their extreme vulnerability, the vastness of city space, the dangers posed by traffic, suspicion of terrorism, and the possibility that no one would be interested in helping a lost little robot, I initially conceived the Tweenbots as disposable creatures which were more likely to struggle and die in the city than to reach their destination. Because I built them with minimal technology, I had no way of tracking the Tweenbot's progress, and so I set out on the first test with a video camera hidden in my purse. I placed the Tweenbot down on the sidewalk, and walked far enough away that I would not be observed as the Tweenbot--a smiling 10-inch tall cardboard missionary--bumped along towards his inevitable fate.

The results were unexpected. Over the course of the following months, throughout numerous missions, the Tweenbots were successful in rolling from their start point to their far-away destination assisted only by strangers. Every time the robot got caught under a park bench, ground futilely against a curb, or became trapped in a pothole, some passerby would always rescue it and send it toward its goal. Never once was a Tweenbot lost or damaged. Often, people would ignore the instructions to aim the Tweenbot in the "right" direction, if that direction meant sending the robot into a perilous situation. One man turned the robot back in the direction from which it had just come, saying out loud to the Tweenbot, "You can't go that way, it's toward the road."

Robot/People art by Kacie Kinzer at ITP (via Wonderland)

The Associated Press has been doing a ton of questionable moves of late, that certainly look like a clueless organization committing suicide -- but, wait! Jim Kennedy, who oversees strategic planning for the AP, claims that only "to the untrained eye, it looks like we're stupid." But, of course, he fails to explain what it looks like to the trained eye -- because most of the "trained eyes" we've spoken to also seem to think that the AP is being stupid. At best, the AP says: "We're looking forward to a totally new space where we have to get ready to do things in a totally different way. We're trying to be smart business people and we're trying to stay in business." But, that's not clear at all from its actions. In fact, it looks like the other way around. The actions aren't about understanding a new space or doing things in a different way. It looks like it's trying to claw its way back to the "old way" of doing things. And, contrary to what folks believe there, that's not the best way to stay in business.

Now, on top of this, the AP has released a rather hilarious FAQ, where it tries to define what it's doing. But, reading through the answers, you get a whole lot of nothing. It claims it's not trying to set up tollbooths, not trying to kill off links and not aiming this at bloggers. Instead, it says that it's (again) trying to prepare for a new way of interacting, and is looking forward to "cooperating." None of this is clear at all. Basically, it looks like the AP still thinks that it gets to define how news on the web will work. The folks there apparently don't comprehend how far past them the internet has already gone. They can try to "negotiate," but if it doesn't fit in with what people do online, it's not going anywhere. Once again, we're in a situation where the AP thinks it has leverage, and it's about to discover it has none.

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From the Guardian's Badge PDA blog, a roundup of 15 years' worth of anti-piracy video PSAs, each more ham-fisted than the last. Classic video.

Video nasties gallery: 15 years of anti-piracy warnings (via Michael Geist)

olddotter noted that NASA's Facebook page writes "NASA's newest module for the International Space Station will get a new name on April 14. The agency plans to make the announcement with the help of Expedition 14 and 15 astronaut Sunita 'Suni' Williams on Comedy Central's 'The Colbert Report.' The program will air at 11:30 p.m. EDT."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Futurlec makes these gas sensors in several varieties: CO2, alcohol (for breathalyzers), ozone, and "air quality" (several gases). They look relatively uncomplicated; anybody know what it would take to hook one of these up to an Arduino? Via Fashioning Technology.

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Olipro writes "Most enterprises stated they won't bother with Windows 7 for at least a year as they simply continue to distrust that compatibility issues won't occur with their mission-critical software... The Million Dollar question will be whether the fact that XP upgrades to Windows 7 requires a clean install will prove to be Microsoft's undoing." I suspect that will change before they actually release the OS.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Inspired by the X0xb0x and it's predecessor, the Roland TB-303, comes Starfire's DIY mini-synth, the Pulsar, featuring -

• 16 step sequencer
  
• LCD info screen
  
• Saw and Square wave
  
• Adjustable gate
  
• Adjustable Tempo
  
• Adjustable Tone
  
• Switchable high pass and low pass filter.

The projects author aims to produce affordable kit from the design. Read more of his progress on the Starfire's Tech blog. [via Synthtopia]

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MAKE subscriber Pete Marchetto pointed us to this awesome site covering all manner of backyard metal casting. In fact, that's its name: Backyard Metal Casting. Peter writes:

Blame Kaden Harris. He got me onto this wonderful site describing many metal casting and metalworking projects.

Okay, Kaden. It's all your fault we're posting this link. You should be.... ashamed?

Backyard Metal Casting

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Recently on Offworld, One More Go columnist Margaret discusses what Halo has in common with football (the real 'football'), all of which boils down to a single verb, and how the latest DS Picross puzzle game is like sculpting with a hint of witchcraft. We've also seen lots of game/art things: The Insomniac Elf, a new game based on one of James Kochalka's fever-dreams, an incredible explorable "software environment" called The Rotten Fruit Tardis from Flash art master James Paterson, Aaron Meyers' API-created Spore skeletons gone augmented reality, I Am 8-Bit's Berlin exhibition being set up in stop motion, and Giant Robot's Game Over/Continue artwork now online for sale (above). Elsewhere we looked at how Rock Band Unplugged will be the PSP's return of a 'lite' version of Harmonix original Amplitude, the 8-bit dungeon strategy of the PSP's most unwieldily titled game, Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do To Deserve This?, and watched a reflection on the short and thankless life of Super Mario's mushroom Goombas. Finally, we listened to an official Braid soundtrack, as the Xbox Live favorite gets its long-awaited PC release, saw game covers done in the style of arthouse DVD label Criterion, took a long look at WiiWare's upcoming gorgeous Night Game and at a sublimely bizarre Plants vs Zombies viral, and, best of all, watched a new fan-made short movie that channels World of Goo via the macabre stop-motion vision of animator Jan Švankmajer.

Just as we saw some corporate lawyers (finally!) advising clients not to freak out and go legal when they saw a "gripes site" show up, it appears that Goldman Sachs has done exactly that. The company and its lawyers have apparently been threatening the site GoldmanSachs666.com. The company is pulling out the oldest trick in the book, claiming that Goldman Sachs customers are "confused" by the site:

"Your use of the mark Goldman Sachs violates several of Goldman Sachs' intellectual property rights, constitutes an act of trademark infringement, unfair competition and implies a relationship and misrepresents commercial activity and/or an affiliation between you and Goldman Sachs which does not exist and additionally creates confusion in the marketplace,"

This is a stretch. Many, many courts have found that such sites are perfectly legitimate, because no one would confuse a site complaining about a company for the company itself. It's likely that Goldman Sachs felt that sending the cease-and-desist would scare the blogger into shutting up. But... as with so many of these things, all it's actually done is draw a hell of a lot more attention to the site. You would think that the bank would have a few more important things to be focused on than some ranting blogger. Indeed, the fact that they seem to want him to shut up, gives him a lot more legitimacy than if the bank had simply ignored him. The fact that management or the lawyers (or both) think this is a big enough issue to deal with suggests that they're actually concerned about what he's saying.

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Jamie noticed the news that Google Update is now Open Source. The article acknowledges the privacy and security concerns of an application that is always running in the background of your machine, and authorized to install new software. And Google made the logically obvious conclusion that releasing the source code would alleviate those concerns.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

freakxx writes "Microsoft has been slapped with a fine of 9 million Euros by German regulators over illegally fixing the price of its Office-suite in an anti-competitive manner during a retail-promotion fair. Microsoft has accepted the fine and decided not to take this issue to any higher level."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Robert Hart is developing his own cosmic ray detector using familiar fluorescent tubes and a high voltage(~650V DC) power supply. The design is a variation on an example from CERN researcher Sascha Schmeling's DIY Spark Chamber -

Like the CERN example above, when a muon flys through the fluorescent tube, the gas inside ionizes due to the high voltage field across the plates. As a result of the ionization the resistance across the plates will fall slightly and so it should be possible to measure this as a change in current flow in the high voltage source.

Radiation originating from Earth will effect the first tube but not the one below it. So singling out matching events between the two should result in the detection of high energy particles sent from a cosmic event -- awesome. Head over to Robert's site for more info on his process and progress. [via Little-Scale]

From the pages of MAKE:

Build a cloud chamber  Volume 09, page 156

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Here's a fun little social experiment. Its creator, Kacie Kinzer, explains:

Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city (NYC) with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.

Tweenbots

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Crazzaper writes "There's a lot of controversy over ISP capping with Time Warner leading the charge. Tom's Hardware has an interesting article about how capping is the new form of DRM at the ISP level. The author draws some comparison to business practices by large cable operators and their efforts to protect cable TV programming. While this is understandable from the cable operator's perspective, the article points out how capping will affect popular services such as Steam for game content publishing and distribution, cloud-computing and online media services. Apparently this is also an effective way of going after casual piracy."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Carl decided to test the limits of the Open Source Electronic Game Kit by letting Arduino give it a go. He wired it up for proper control and after three hours of chip versus chip recorded the following …

Apologies - I suppose that's a bit of an ending-spoiler for all you hardcore gamers out there ;)
See more of the build in his photo set.

In the Maker Shed:


Build Your Own Electronic Game Kit

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Last month, we were a bit surprised to find out that the German government had raided the home of the guy who had registered Wikileaks.de, the German version of Wikileaks. Now, as a bunch of people have submitted, the German government has pushed the German domain registrar DENIC to delete Wikileaks.de entirely. It really makes you wonder what the government is hoping to accomplish -- because so far, all it's done is call that much more attention to the fact that it seems scared to death of what might appear on Wikileaks (and what will certainly still appear on other versions of Wikileaks -- now with that much more attention).

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MAKE contributor and robotics author Tod Kurt put up this short video and how-to on hacking tiny, cheap servo motors for continuous rotation. Anyone who's done a lot of miniature robotics building probably knows the hardware hack to turn a regular servo motor into a continuous-rotation gearmotor, by removing the mechanical stop and the servo control PCB. Here, Tod is removing the stops (two here) and swapping out the potentiometer for 2 resistors on the PCB. What you end up with is a full-rotation, bi-directional gearmotor, with positional control, sort of like a low-precision stepper motor.

Tiny Servos as Continuous Rotation Gearmotors [via adafruit]

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Hugh Pickens writes "The British government's Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT), a 200-strong Home Office unit created 18 months ago, has said in meetings it wants to 'flood the internet' with 'positive' interpretations of Islam and plans to train government-approved groups in search engine optimization techniques, which it is hoped will boost their profile online and battle radicalization. A Home Office spokesman confirmed search engine optimization training is part of the government's anti-radicalization strategy. 'In order to support mainstream voices, we work with local partners to help develop their communication, representational and leadership skills. This support could include media training, which can help make their voices heard more widely, and support the development of skills which allow communities to be more effective in debate.' However the effectiveness of search engine optimization in reducing traffic to extremist websites has been dismissed by academics. A report produced by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) said young Muslims were much more likely to be directed to extremist material online by web forums and offline associates than by Google or other search engines. 'Tweaking the results for supposedly extremist terms would be largely ineffectual, not least because it is unlikely that any but the most callow wannabe terrorist would use a mainstream search engine to find banned material.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The big controversy of the weekend (there's always gotta be at least one, it seems) is that people started noticing that Amazon.com started removing books that involve gay or lesbian characters from its sales rankings, and when asked about it, the company initially said that it was excluding "adult" material from certain searches. That struck many as odd, considering that many of the "excluded" books weren't "adult" at all. After the controversy continued, Amazon changed its story and started claiming that it was actually all just a computer "glitch." Of course, this sounds remarkably similar to the computer "glitch" Amazon found when it suddenly deleted a bunch of negative reviews of EA's DRM-encrusted video game Spore. Whether it's true or not, Amazon is certainly giving off the appearance that it blames any such mistake on a "glitch," but never seems to provide anything in the way of details to support that.

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The Gakken SX-150 Analog Synthesizer Kit from the Maker shed is a really fun kit to build, mod, and hack. The first time I tried one out was at Maker Faire in 2008 and I was really impressed by the sound this little synth kit was able to produce.

Features:

• Size: 4.5" x 6"
  
• Controls for LFO, pitch envelope, frequency cutoff, resonance, and attack/decay
  
• Slide controller (pen type electrode)
  
• Output and external input 1/8" jacks
  
• Small built-in speaker
  
• Runs on 4 AA batteries (not included)
  

More about the Gakken SX-150 Analog Synthesizer Kit

Collin did an excellent video review of this cool little synth a while back on the blog. Check out the custom "pick" buttons he added to the stock kit.

More about Collin's review of the Gakken analog synth kit

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Eurogamer has an article which takes a look at how various game companies deal with gold spammers in their games. Some, like Mythic, take a hard stance, literally telling farmers and sellers to "go to hell." Others engage in an arms race to block such behavior, sometimes to the detriment of normal users. "In fact, a former Jagex source tells me that when Jagex banned all IPs connected to gold selling, 'they lost 10 per cent of their membership, and still haven't recovered in terms of numbers since they did it two years ago. Even though they have almost stopped gold selling in RuneScape, it has cost them two million active accounts; i.e. there were four million players, there are now two million players, of which less than one million actually subscribe.'" Still more companies are experimenting with real money trading (RMT) to at least establish some control and security over the situation.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anonymous writes "Two graduate students at the Ivy League's Brown University built a P2P system to use abandoned wiki sites to store data. The students were stealing bandwidth from open MediaWiki sites to send data between users as an alternative to BitTorrent. There was immediate backlash as site operators quickly complained to the University. The project appears to be shutdown, but many of the pages still remain on the web. The project homepage was also taken down and the students posted an apology this afternoon." The same submitter links to two different forum discussions on the project.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I spent 40 minutes this evening talking with Jay about news, tech and the future of journalism. As always it was a great learning experience with the NYU journalism professor.

A frequently asked question -- what feed should I subscribe to to get the flow? The answer -- the feed for Scripting News. When I do a podcast it's included as a standard RSS 2.0 enclosure.

At the end of the show I promised to create a room on FriendFeed to post links to stories we'll discuss on future shows.

mikael writes "The LA Times is reporting on the efforts of a group of volunteers with funding from NASA to recover high resolution photographs of the Moon taken by Lunar Orbiter 1 in the 1960s. The collection of 2000 images is stored entirely on magnetic tape which can only be read by a $330,000 FR-900 Ampex magnetic tape reader. The team consisted of Nancy Evans, NASA's archivist who ensured that the 20-foot by 10-foot x 6-foot collection of magnetic tapes were never thrown out, Dennis Wingo, Keith Cowing of NASA Watch and Ken Zim who had experience of repairing video equipment. Two weeks ago, the second image, of the Copernicus Crater, was recovered."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.