Groo Wanderer writes "Normally, a well-crafted fake ATM would skim a lot of card information before it was noticed, if it was ever noticed at all. Because it is safer for the criminals and harder to prosecute, financial crimes like this are spreading fast. If you are smart, you don't try to pull one off in the middle of a computer security convention where the attendees are very good at spotting such scams. That said, some not-so-bright criminal tried to plant a fake ATM at Defcon. He now has one less fake ATM and a whole lot of investigators on his tail."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This week on CRAFT we saw:

How-To: Homemade Sidewalk Chalk

CRAFT Video: Two Cat Toys

Book Review: Digital Textile Design by Melanie Bowles and Ceri Isaac

Winners of the Singer & CRAFT Swimsuit Cover-Up Contest

How-To: Catnip Castle

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apokryphos writes "Novell has just announced the release of SUSE Studio 1.0 — a user-friendly Web service that allows you to create your customized Linux distribution as a live CD, USB, Xen, or VMware image. Users have control over adding any repositories, packages, and files to the distribution. A new user can do the full creation and customization of the software appliance in roughly ten minutes. It also includes a Flash-based "test drive" service, which allows you to try out your appliance in a Web browser before downloading it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A week after Microsoft agreed to include a browser ballot screen in Windows 7 systems sold in Europe, then announced that those systems would initially include no browser at all — specifically, no Internet Explorer — Microsoft has changed its mind again and dropped talk of a European Windows 7 E edition. Here is the official Microsoft blog announcement, which includes a screen shot of the proposed ballot screen. The browsers are listed left-to-right in order of market share, with IE therefore having pride of place. PC Pro notes that, since the ballot screen would not appear if IE were not pre-installed, Microsoft's proposal opens the door for Google to work with PC manufacturers to get Chrome on new machines. Note that the browser ballot screen has not yet been accepted by the EU, though the initial reaction to it was welcoming.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jason Torchinsky is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Jason has a book out now, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is a tinkerer and artist and writes for the Onion News Network. He lives with his partner Sally, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap.

For those of you in the greater Los Angeles area who are either interested in the book Carrie and I wrote/edited, or if anyone just wants to berate me for any of the posts I've put up here these past two weeks, then come on out to Book Soup in West Hollywood where I'll be doing a reading from the book, answering questions, and maybe some small appliance repair. Hope to see you there, internet!

RobGoldsmith sends word of Interorbital's TubeSat Personal Satellite Kit, which allows anyone to send a half-pound payload to low-earth orbit for $8,000. Your satellite will fly to orbit from Tonga atop an Interorbital Systems NEPTUNE 30 rocket along with 31 other TubeSats. It will function for several weeks, then its orbit will decay and it will burn up in the atmosphere. Interorbital plans to send up a load of 32 TubeSats every month. If you pay in full in advance, you get slotted onto a particular scheduled launch. Here are Interorbital's product page and brochure (PDF).

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Carrie McLaren is a guest blogger at Boing Boing and coauthor of Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. She lives in Brooklyn, the former home of her now defunct Stay Free! magazine.

Before signing off from our stint as guest bloggers, I thought I'd post a back issue from Stay Free! The "psychology" issue has been unavailable for quite some time, so here it is in convenient pdf form.

Better Living Through Lobotomy: What can the history of psychosurgery tell us about medicine today?

Interview with historian Elliot Valenstein

Lawrence Kirmayer discusses cross-cultural mental health

A brief history of employee personality testing by Ana Marie Cox

Curious Mental Illnesses of the World

The history of psychosomatic illness (interview with Edward Shorter)

Enter the Wolfman: The syndrome that makes one howl at the moon

More!

The Szondi personality test (above) started with the assumption that everyone is a little crazy and proceeded to unearth which disorder was the cause. Each test subject was shown photos of people and asked to pick out the one they'd most like to sit next to on a train trip. Little did subjects know that the people they were shown were all "thoroughly disordered"--a homosexual, a sadist, and an epileptic, among others. The "disorder" that subjects selected was presumed to indicate their own disposition. -- from "Test Mania!"

Link (pdf)

This appears to be a "satellite kit" for $8k via /.

Planet Earth has entered the age of the Personal Satellite with the introduction of Interorbital's TubeSat Personal Satellite (PS) Kit. The new IOS TubeSat PS Kit is the low-cost alternative to the CubeSat. It has three-quarters of the mass (0.75-kg) and volume of a CubeSat, but still offers plenty of room for most experiments or functions. And, best of all, the price of the TubeSat kit actually includes the price of a launch into Low-Earth-Orbit on an IOS NEPTUNE 30 launch vehicle. Since the TubeSats are placed into self-decaying orbits 310 kilometers (192 miles) above the Earth's surface, they do not contribute to any long-term build-up of orbital debris. After a few weeks of operation, they will safely re-enter the atmosphere and burn-up. TubeSats are designed to be orbit-friendly. Launches are expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2010.

A TubeSat is designed to function as a Basic Satellite Bus or as a simple stand-alone satellite. Each TubeSat kit includes the satellite's structural components, safety hardware, solar panels, batteries, power management hardware and software,  transceiver, antennas, microcomputer, and the required programming tools. With these components alone, the builder can construct a satellite that puts out enough power to be picked up on the ground by a hand-held HAM radio receiver. Simple applications include broadcasting a repeating message from orbit or programming the satellite to function as a private orbital HAM radio relay station. These are just two examples. The TubeSat also allows the builder to add his or her own experiment or function to the basic TubeSat kit.

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jon jonson writes "Information from the collapsed Icelandic bank Kaupthing has been leaked to WikiLeaks, revealing billions in insider loans, and the bank has been working day and night to censor the information contained in the document. Last night at 6:55pm GMT, they served an injunction against the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service, five minutes before the 7pm news was due to be aired. The TV station just displayed the WikiLeaks URL instead. They've also injuncted Iceland's national radio, banning all discussion about the contents of the document, and they are actively trying to censor the rest of the Icelandic media along with WikiLeaks."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's been a really busy week in the Maker Shed. We are continuing our Dog days of summer sale, and we added a new Box amplifier kit, along with a line of high quality microscopes. Speaking of microscopes, Robert Bruce Thompson wrote a really informative article on the subject too.

Earlier in the week my dog got her hands on an XGS development system. She was able to program a video game, even without any previous experience with micro-controllers! Read more about what happened here.

The other great deal in the Maker Shed is our huge summer clearance sale featuring a wide range of products. The sale will run for the rest of the summer, but only while supplies last. Be sure to check back regularly since we will be adding daily specials throughout the summer on some of our popular products.

More about the Maker Shed summer clearance sale

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Jon Taplin reproduces this jaw-dropping chart: Floyd Norris's scary graph of Durable Goods Production, adding, "We have so hollowed out our industrial plant that the only thing we are now producing is weapons of war." He goes on to quote Toynbee on Rome: "The economy of the Empire was basically a Raubwirtschaft or plunder economy based on looting existing resources rather than producing anything new. The Empire relied on booty from conquered territories... With the cessation of tribute from conquered territories, the full cost of their military machine had to be borne by the citizenry."

Update: The total numbers are better than the percentage changes: The US "remains primarily a civilian economy. Military now takes 8% of all durable goods, up from 3% in 2000."

National Security State

An anonymous reader writes "With the deadline for a Supreme Court appeal rapidly approaching, the students who sued TurnItIn.com for issues surrounding copyright infringement reached a settlement with the site's company on Friday. Now the search goes out for any student who has a paper which is being held by TurnItIn that they did not upload themselves. If your teacher uploaded a paper and ran a TurnItIn report without your permission, I bet the students' attorney would like to hear from you."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Keith sez, "Ray Bradbury will celebrate his 89th birthday in Glendale, Ca, on Saturday August 22nd. I contacted the book store and they promise to give Ray any cards that make to their address. I'll go to the mall and see if I can find a card with a dinosaur on it. The address is for sending birthday greetings is:"

Ray Bradbury C/O
Mystery and Imagination
237 North Brand Blvd.
Glendale, CA 91203

Ray Bradbury 89th Birthday Party (Thanks, Keith!)

alphadogg writes "The US Air Force has found an unlikely source of new recruits: the yearly Defcon hacking conference, which has been running since Thursday in Las Vegas. Col. Michael Convertino came to Defcon for the first time last year, and after finding about 60 good candidates for both enlisted and civilian positions, decided to come back again. Federal agencies have only recently begun embracing the hacker crowd. When US Department of Defense director of futures exploration Jim Christy hosted his first Defcon 'Meet the Fed' panel in 1999, he was one of two people onstage. At this week's Defcon, there may be several thousand federal employees in attendance, he said."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

wisebabo writes "A panel reporting to President Obama is recommending that we skip landing on the Moon and Mars and instead consider progressively deeper space voyages (first to the L1 Earth-Moon point, then perhaps the L2 Earth-Sun point, then a Mars flyby/orbit or asteroid visits). While in Mars orbit, the astronauts could send robotic probes to land on the surface, which could be much more effective than current rovers without the 10-minute time lag to Earth. I, for one, whole-heartedly agree that this approach would lead to 'the most steady cadence of steady improvement,' and keep us from inconsistent achievements in space (like not leaving Earth orbit for 40 years). Some would say that this approach would be lacking in the photo-ops necessary to maintain interest in the space program (no footprints on Martian soil) but I think there would be plenty of cool vistas — perhaps a rendezvous with a comet, or even orbiting one of the moons of Jupiter, assuming they figure out radiation shielding — to keep the taxpayer dollars flowing. The science return would be much greater because it would hopefully utilize both man and machine at their best; robots on one-way trips down into a gravity well while the humans provide the intuition and flexibility from orbit."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ponca City, We love you writes "The Washington Post reports that Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has called members of Congress to inform them that the 'cash for clunkers' program will be suspended because the program has run out of money, and congressmen say they intend to ask the Obama administration to divert some funding from the existing economic stimulus package to maintain a scheme that they see as genuinely stimulative. 'Clearly, this has been a very stimulative program that's got consumers back into the car market. It's our hope that possibly more funds can be made available,' says Cody Lusk, president of the American International Automobile Dealers Association." If there is more funding, though, a report on CNET says it may come out of money to have been set aside for renewable energy loans by the US government.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

metrix007 points out a story in the Sunday Express with more surveillance-camera madness from the UK, where the government now wants to place 20,000 CCTV cameras to monitor families ("the worst families in England") within their own homes, to make sure that "kids go to bed on time and eat healthy meals and the like. This is going too far, and hopefully will not pass. Where will it end?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

These shirts definitely caught my attention when they showed up on the MAKE Flickr pool. David Adams, of the newly-launched Atoms Apparel, writes:

We are some makers and hardware hackers in Seattle that started a screen printing project this summer to make some hardware hacker shirts. We got such a great response from our friends that we decided to gear up and start printing professional-quality shirts for makers, geeks, DIYers, and hardware hackers. LED shirts, hot glue gun, transistors, oscilloscope shirt, etc. We've made most of the screen printing gear ourselves and the shirts have turned out very nice. Hope you'll have a look.

My plastic is definitely getting nervous in my wallet.

Atoms Apparel

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Jason Torchinsky is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Jason has a book out now, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is a tinkerer and artist and writes for the Onion News Network. He lives with his partner Sally, five animals, too many old cars, and a shed full of crap.

Back when my old comedy group, the Van Gogh-Goghs, used to be in North Carolina, we often met to practice in one of our members basement. The basement belonged to Galen, who was fond of looking for interesting things at tag sales, estate sales, auctions, and the like. One night, after we'd resigned ourselves to the fact that not much was going to get done, Galen pulled out a stack of old 8mm film reels he'd purchased at a recent tag sale.

It being a summer night in North Carolina, and Galen's basement being cool and relatively mosquito-free, we stayed to watch the films. I don't think any of us were really prepared for what we saw.

The films started our innocently enough: vacation films from a well-to-do Chapel Hill family, at the beach, some interesting aerial shots of Chapel Hill, lots of people in fussy clothes and hats looking at the camera and waving. Some were even color, which was a bit surprising.

The next reels got more interesting. The family apparently took a trip to Europe in the early '30s. Shots of snowy alps, quaint chalets, ski lifts, and then, rows of Nazi flags. Handheld camera shots walking down a street, until a brown-shirted Nazi covers the camera lens with his hand. Cut to a Nazi rally, with the camera in the crowd, as the cinematographer raises their hand, along with everyone else in the massive arena, in a Nazi salute. Pan to the stage, small from the distance and central, as a small, familiar figure walks up to the podium, the part of his hair the hypotenuse of his facial triangle, a square cursor of a mustache under his nose, as he then starts to harangue the cheering crowd, silently.

Cut back to a North Carolina basement, with six stunned, creeped-out faces, as they realize they're seeing unknown footage of Hitler. Cheerwine and Mountain Dew are gulped, nervously.

Galen still has these films, and none of us could really figure out what to do with them. Are someone's home movies of Hitler (and Mussolini, If I recall) as valuable as they seem? Or are there a number of these kinds of reels floating around?

The films aren't digitized at this point, but if anyone has any good advice as to what to do with them, I'l pass it on to Galen. Thanks, internet; you always know just what to do.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Just when you think this case couldn't get any stranger, it now appears that the defendant's 'legal team' in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum is passing the hat, taking up a collection. Only the reason for the collection isn't to defray costs and expenses of further defending the action, but to pay the RIAA the amount of the judgment so that their client won't have to declare bankruptcy. I would suggest there might have been a much better way of avoiding bankruptcy. It's called 'handling the case competently.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Parenting in the Internet age is great: since I'm the one who gets up with the baby first thing in the morning (we're both early, 5AM risers), I entertain her until breakfast. Sometimes she'll carry my laptop over to me, climb up onto my lap, and we'll watch videos from the net; there's plenty of great stuff on YouTube, but lately we've been exploring the Internet Archive's collection of public domain animation and cartoons. This morning we had a great time with Max Fleischer's Betty Boop cartoon The Old Man of the Mountain with Cab Calloway.

What I'm really hoping to find is those old Max Fleischer sing along follow-the-bouncing-ball cartoons, like "Let's All Sing Like the Birdies Sing" and "Give My Regards to Broadway," but haven't turned those up yet.

Star Simpson came up with this awesome plane-sleeping "hack." She outfitted a pair of kid's water wings with sheaths sewn from old T-shirt fabric. Looks comfy to me!

Sound Sleep on a Long Flight

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Here's a gallery of photos by seven contemporary Detroit photographers: "These seven artists have been working in the city as explorers, adventurers and pioneers for years to capture the city as it changes, evolves, devolves and transforms into something unbelievable, profound and heartbreaking. In the end they hope as a group to show Detroit as it is, not what it should be or what it was, but how it is. This in itself a provocative gesture as there are not many who feel content with the Detroit of today."

The shooters are Corine Smith, Mitch Cope, Clinton Snider, Mark Alor Powell, Antonio Gomez, Ingo Vetter and Scott Hocking; and Mitch Cope, who assembled the gallery, wants to do a book of these shots. I'd buy it.

7 CONTEMPORARY DETROIT PHOTOGRAPHERS (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

(Image: Mark Alor Powell )

Large scale coffee art... video here.

Leonardo Da Venti latte: A total of 3,604 cups of coffee, each shaded by various amounts of cream or left black, were arranged to form a Mona Lisa for this digital print-out in Sydney.

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psych787 writes "OQO's product line — much loved by their community at oqotalk — has recently suffered a slow, agonizing death. After dropping warranty repairs, not returning several units sent in, disconnecting phonelines, and leaving trash at their headquarters, a couple of units have survived and found eBay. The last one went for $4.5k. Now the only PC for sale to include an OLED has gone for $6.5k. At that price, perhaps a competitor bought the device to come up with something that meets the same market?"

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Coilhouse has a fun piece on the recent Cardboard Tube Fighting League tournament in SF.

Carboard Dueling: Through A Series of Tubes

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