Every week, Limor and Phil from adafruit industries do a Ustreamed "Ask an engineer" live chat. This week, tonight, they're going to do it from Maker Faire Rhode Island. Here's what they said on their site:

Tonight is our weekly "Ask an engineer" live chat - 10pm ET tonight, we're going to attempt to "broadcast" LIVE from Maker Faire Rhode Island. We'll see how it goes, we might need to go text only if there isn't a good connection. Either way - stop by! Here are some handy details:

* Visit our new "chat" section on Adafruit at 10pm ET - 9/19/2009
* Or visit our Ustream page
* For old schoolers, you can use IRC, you'll need a Ustream log/pass, check out the Ustream IRC how-tos here and here
* We are #adafruit-industries6796 on IRC server chat1.ustream.tv
* There will be a trivia question at the end of the night as always!
* Lastly, if anyone can save a log we'd appreciate it

"Ask an engineer" live chat - 10pm ET tonight LIVE from Maker Faire Rhode Island (hopefully)
Maker Faire Rhode Island

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Barence writes "PC Pro has benchmarked the first Intel Core i7 processors for laptops. The chips mark the debut of Intel's Turbo Boost technology, which ramps up the speed of the working cores if two or more cores are sitting unused. For the quad-core i7-820QM, this can take the stock speed of 1.73GHz up to a maximum of 3.06GHz. The 2D benchmarks show comparable performance to Core 2 Extreme chips running at 2.53GHz. Power consumption and processor temperature is dramatically lower, which should lead to significant improvements in laptop battery life."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Barence writes "PC Pro has benchmarked the first Intel Core i7 processors for laptops. The chips mark the debut of Intel's Turbo Boost technology, which ramps up the speed of the working cores if two or more cores are sitting unused. For the quad-core i7-820QM, this can take the stock speed of 1.73GHz up to a maximum of 3.06GHz. The 2D benchmarks show comparable performance to Core 2 Extreme chips running at 2.53GHz. Power consumption and processor temperature is dramatically lower, which should lead to significant improvements in laptop battery life."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here's our pal Bre Pettis' Gnomedex presentation on Makerbot, what it is, how it came about, and his thoughts on bringing your ideas to market, collaborating, open sourcing, etc.

Gnomedex

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Combat Wombat writes with this excerpt from the Register: "New data breach rules for US healthcare providers have come under criticism from a security firm that specialises in encryption. As part of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, which comes into effect from 23 September, health organisations in the US that use encryption will no longer be obliged to notify clients of breaches."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The last time we covered this neat die reading machine by Steve Hoefer, he had a very nice design that was starting to be able to determine the number of a die placed on it. Well, he swapped out his problematic photoresistor sensors for an infrared emitter/detector-based scheme to produce version 2, which he claims works with almost perfect accuracy. Another feature he added is to display the complement of the sensed number, so that the display shows the same number as the top of the die.

I find this project especially interesting because of the homemade sensing apparatus. Instead of going with a full-blown computer vision system to solve this problem, he used a bunch of simple sensors in a creative way, and was able to build the whole thing using a low-power microcontroller. In fact, his solution reduces the problem so well, that even the microcontroller could be eschewed for a straightforward set of logic gates. Anyone up for that project?

Challenge: Steve determined that he needs to look at five 'pip' (black dot) locations to uniquely identify each number. Can you explain why? Are there any other arrangements of five sensors that could work? Remember that each number could physically be rotated to four different positions, and you need to detect it no matter how it is stuck in. Answer on Monday.

[via Hacked Gadgets]

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mateuscb writes "A campaign backed by automakers and some lawmakers to make electric or hybrid cars noisier in a bid to increase safety for pedestrians and cyclists has taken a strange, Blade Runner-type twist. Nissan sound engineers have announced that the Leaf electric car set for release next year will emit a 'beautiful and futuristic' noise similar to the sound of flying cars — or 'spinners' — that buzz around 2019 Los Angeles in Ridley Scott's dystopian thriller based on a Philip K. Dick science fiction novel."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

eldavojohn writes "The BBC and others are reporting on the United States Department of Justice recommending to a New York court to reject the Google book deal. The Google book deal has received considerable attention but for the most part it has been negative."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

eldavojohn writes "It's been nine months since California announced intentions for new regulations for energy consuming televisions in their state but yesterday the California Energy Commission released the first draft (more information from the horse's mouth). If you live in another state, you may be unfamiliar with California's history of mandating power usage among anything from dishwashers to washing machines and other household appliances. This has also led to California pushing to ban incandescent light bulbs. From their FAQ on TV Efficiency Standards: 'The proposed standards have no effect on existing televisions. If approved, they would only apply to TVs sold in California after January 1, 2011. The first standard (Tier 1) would take effect January 1, 2011, and reduce energy consumption by average of 33 percent. The second measure (Tier 2) would take effect in 2013 and, in conjunction with Tier 1, reduce energy consumption by an average of 49 percent.' The Draft from December 2008 is available on their site (with a shorter "Just the Facts" flier for those of you without two hours to burn), no indication if that's what they're going with or if it's been updated since."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

eldavojohn writes "It's been nine months since California announced intentions for new regulations for energy consuming televisions in their state but yesterday the California Energy Commission released the first draft (more information from the horse's mouth). If you live in another state, you may be unfamiliar with California's history of mandating power usage among anything from dishwashers to washing machines and other household appliances. This has also led to California pushing to ban incandescent light bulbs. From their FAQ on TV Efficiency Standards: 'The proposed standards have no effect on existing televisions. If approved, they would only apply to TVs sold in California after January 1, 2011. The first standard (Tier 1) would take effect January 1, 2011, and reduce energy consumption by average of 33 percent. The second measure (Tier 2) would take effect in 2013 and, in conjunction with Tier 1, reduce energy consumption by an average of 49 percent.' The Draft from December 2008 is available on their site (with a shorter "Just the Facts" flier for those of you without two hours to burn), no indication if that's what they're going with or if it's been updated since."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

alphadogg writes "Facebook has agreed to shut down its much-maligned Beacon advertising system in order to settle a class-action lawsuit. The lawsuit, filed in August of last year, alleged that Facebook and its Beacon affiliates like Blockbuster and Overstock.com violated a series of laws, including the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Video Privacy Protection Act, the California Consumer Legal Remedies Act and the California Computer Crime Law. The proposed settlement, announced late on Friday, calls not only for Facebook to discontinue Beacon, but also back the creation of an independent foundation devoted to promoting online privacy, safety and security. The money for the foundation will come from a US$9.5 million settlement fund."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

alphadogg writes "Facebook has agreed to shut down its much-maligned Beacon advertising system in order to settle a class-action lawsuit. The lawsuit, filed in August of last year, alleged that Facebook and its Beacon affiliates like Blockbuster and Overstock.com violated a series of laws, including the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Video Privacy Protection Act, the California Consumer Legal Remedies Act and the California Computer Crime Law. The proposed settlement, announced late on Friday, calls not only for Facebook to discontinue Beacon, but also back the creation of an independent foundation devoted to promoting online privacy, safety and security. The money for the foundation will come from a US$9.5 million settlement fund."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There seems to be much progress on the DNS project I asked for a couple of days ago. Two or three developers seem to be approaching the point of deploying and the APIs probably are pretty close. I hope that when they surface we can try to get the APIs into agreement. The differences appear to be cosmetic.

There's another project I'd like to wish into existence.

I fell in love with the realtime API implemented by FriendFeed. Very simple, clever, reliable, functional, a kind of no-brainer that I wish more APIs were. The only problem was it only worked with FriendFeed, which is cool because there are a lot of interesting people there, but it got even more interesting when they released the back-end server, Tornado, as open source.

This is good for two reasons: 1. It's really good interesting technology, and 2. It doesn't come from Google, it comes from Facebook, one of their rivals. Diversify is always a good strategy in the financial markets and in the tech world too.

Anyway here's what I wish for. I'd like someone to show up in the rssCloud communithy with a Tornado server running that either is an instance of rssCloud (preferable) or is connected to an instance (i.e. receiving notifications). I'd then like to hook River2 up to this server through a persistent realtime connection so that it can be notified of updates through a NAT and firewall. Then of course I'd write up a Howto explaining how I did it, ask for feedback and hope that people create more software that interops.

How about it? Anyone up for making some history??

PS: I wasn't really a Deadhead, but I have lots of friends who are, and I admire much of the spririt of the community. One of the things they invented was this idea of needing a miracle. It comes from a John Perry Barlow/Bob Weir song. People talk about wanting "miracle tickets" -- that is, a ticket that gets you into something for free, like a Dead show. But the concept applies to airlines, baseball games, movies, private parties, you name it. It also applies to new Internet bootstraps. To get something like rssCloud booted, like Barlow and Weir, I need a miracle -- ever-ee day!

Toren Altair writes "NASA has assigned the crew for the last scheduled space shuttle mission, targeted to launch in September 2010. The flight to the International Space Station will carry a pressurized logistics module to the station. Veteran shuttle commander and retired Air Force Col. Steven W. Lindsey will command the eight-day mission, designated STS-133. Air Force Col. Eric A. Boe will serve as the pilot; it will be his second flight as a shuttle pilot. Mission Specialists are shuttle mission veteran Air Force Col. Benjamin Alvin Drew, Jr., and long-duration spaceflight veterans Michael R. Barratt, Army Col. Timothy L. Kopra and Nicole P. Stott." Reader Al points out other NASA news that the space agency's engineers have been testing a sleek new lunar rover that will be part of their eventual return to the moon. A video of the rover in action has been posted as well.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

chalkyj writes "NCSoft has announced that they will be dropping GameGuard from the western launch of their upcoming MMORPG, Aion. The flawed Korean anti-cheat software has been heavily criticized for employing root-kit like techniques and conflicting with many hardware configurations. The final straw is thought to have been the stability issues experienced by players during open beta and the community outcry it caused. The decision makes Aion, which recently announced over 400,000 western pre-orders, a real contender in the western MMO market."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

lkcl writes "Two independent projects, Skulpt and Pyjamas, are working to bring Python to the web browser (and the JavaScript command-line) the hard way: as JavaScript. Skulpt already has a cool Python prompt demo on its homepage; Pyjamas has a gwtcanvas demo port and a GChart 2.6 demo port. Using the 64-bit version of Google v8 and PyV8, Pyjamas has just recently and successfully run its Python regression tests, converted to JavaScript, at the command-line. (Note: don't try any of the above SVG demos with FF2 or IE6; they will suck.)"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you're a Lovecraft fan and have not yet seen the HPLHS's 2005 silent-film adaptation of Call of Cthulhu, well, there may be nothing, anywhere, that's more important than that you go do so immediately. So. Very. Good. The look they achieve on a low budget is amazing, and a lot of that is due to the outstanding props, including several awesome Cthulhu idols, many of which are available in reproduction. But the art deco "LeGrasse" idol shown here is my favorite.

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Jesse Brown, a BoingBoing guest-blogger, is the host of TVO's Search Engine podcast.

Today is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

Let's hope it's a sweet one! No better way to kick it off then with this sweet classic from Moishe Oysher and the Barry Sisters, Halevai.

What a tour de force! Check Oysher's vocal gymnastics as he bounces off of the Barry Sisters' harmonies! He coulda been one hell of a freestyle rapper...

This song makes me happy every time I hear it.

An anonymous reader writes "It's that time of year again; the nights are drawing in, the leaves are beginning to turn, and literally hundreds of teams of dedicated F/OSS enthusiasts from around the world are preparing to hit the streets in celebration of Software Freedom Day 2009. In an effort to increase awareness of free and open source software among the general public, SFD teams will be standing around town centers and shopping malls, holding talks at schools and universities, giving demonstrations and handing out Linux and FOSS collections for Windows on CD. With money being tight and paranoia about malware and viruses at an all-time high, the time is right to help consumers switch to the myriad of quality open source applications available. If you would like to check for an SFD team in your area and consider attending, be it to help out or simply learn more about free software for yourself, there's an interactive map to help you find your way."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "The police chief in Austin, TX is not happy that people are voicing their disapproval of him via anonymous blog posts and comments. He claims that 'such posts erode public trust in the department.' The chief wants to find out who these people are and investigate and prosecute such posters for statements he deems defamatory and libelous. Interestingly, the article notes, 'the Associated Press has reported that most of the cases fail because statements of opinion are protected under the First Amendment.' One wonders if this is a legitimate problem that warrants public money to investigate, or whether it's that the people who deserve the most public scrutiny don't like it when others take issue with their job performance."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tanner of Noystoise demos a rather sweet little synth he's housed inside of what appears to be an alarm clock's former enclosure -

mini keyboard heavily modified to make synthesizer sounds. frequency divider triggers an envelope generator that modulates the vcf with resonance at 1/256? of the vco. the vco is divided in 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 and mixed to the vcf. 1/32,1/64, 1/128 of the vco also modulates the frequency of the vco(pitch) and generates some pretty random voices.

This piece is just the tip of the iceburg - for more, be sure to hit up the NoysToise blog.

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CWmike writes "By the end of 2010, users in more than 80 US cities may be able to ditch their cable modems, T1 setups and DSL lines — and the Wi-Fi routers that go with them — in favor of WiMax wireless technology. Wait, haven't we heard that before? WiMax has been promised 'any day now' for years, but WiMax vendors such as Clearwire Communications LLC have suffered numerous delays in rolling out services. A recent ramp-up in Clearwire deployments bodes well for WiMax, but it may not have the chance to fully get off the ground before a competing technology called Long-Term Evolution (LTE) does it in. Craig Mathias, principal analyst at Farpoint Group and a Computerworld columnist, sees WiMax taking a minority stake in the wireless broadband future. 'LTE will eventually be a combined broadband voice/data solution that can do everything that WiMax can and more,' he said. Mathias believes that LTE could get up to 80% of the global market share in future cellular installations. 'This leaves WiMax with a potential market share that cannot exceed 20% — but that's still a huge number, assuming 4 billion users around 2020 or so," he said. 'You do the math. The opportunity is nothing to sneeze at.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After exploring the innards of our CD drives, students in my robotics class are coming up with some clever junkbots. Here are a few of the first ones, more to come as they evolve. In both cases, by the end of the period, these student designed and made devices had been improved before the period ended.

As the school year begins, how do you help students understand the basics of electricity, manufacturing, and creating original devices? As a student, what are the best projects for the start of the semester or school year to get you excited to go deep and learn more?

More:

• How-To: Free DIY battery holders
• How-To: CD drive scavenging for parts
• How-To: Classroom vibrobots

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Here's build-notes from a stellar fan-costume for Big Daddy from the game Bioshock:

Starting with the blueprints printed at full scale (HUGE) I made cross sections out of insulation foam and glued them into place. The empty areas between sections were filled with cardboard. This formed what I called the "skeleton" of the body. The empty cavities in the skeleton were then filled in with expanding foam. After drying, the foam was carved into the shape of the main body. After this was completed (and the foam given more drying time so it would retain its shape) the entire form was covered in stretch fabric. This smoothed out a lot of the lumpiness of the foam.

Big Daddy (Bioshock) (via Wonderland)

Dan Gillmor sez, "Students (including some of mine) from a bunch of US journalism schools have outdone themselves with their foundation-funded summer project. Their work combines all kinds of media and ideas around a theme of 'a changing America,' with smart use of modern tools and traditional techniques. The pros could learn something from this."

The nation's leading journalism schools come together in this unique program to experiment with new forms of in-depth and investigative reporting.

Students travel the country to report on critical issues facing our changing nation and then find innovative ways to tell those stories.

News21 | Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education (Thanks, Dan!)

What a lovely homey touch these 8-bit house-numbers add to a "Gamer geek house." Made by Austin Laser Art.

Gamer geek house numbers (via Wonderland)

Salon has a refreshing take on the effect of the net on wider culture, courtesy of Dennis Baron, author of the new book A Better Pencil. Baron places hysteria about the net's supposed dumbing-down in context with other panics of years gone by.

Historically, when the new communication device comes out, the reaction tends to be divided. Some people think it's the best thing since sliced bread; other people fear it as the end of civilization as we know it. And most people take a wait and see attitude. And if it does something that they're interested in, they pick up on it, if it doesn't, they don't buy into it.

I start with Plato's critique of writing where he says that if we depend on writing, we will lose the ability to remember things. Our memory will become weak. And he also criticizes writing because the written text is not interactive in the way spoken communication is. He also says that written words are essentially shadows of the things they represent. They're not the thing itself. Of course we remember all this because Plato wrote it down -- the ultimate irony.

We hear a thousand objections of this sort throughout history: Thoreau objecting to the telegraph, because even though it speeds things up, people won't have anything to say to one another. Then we have Samuel Morse, who invents the telegraph, objecting to the telephone because nothing important is ever going to be done over the telephone because there's no way to preserve or record a phone conversation. There were complaints about typewriters making writing too mechanical, too distant -- it disconnects the author from the words. That a pen and pencil connects you more directly with the page. And then with the computer, you have the whole range of "this is going to revolutionize everything" versus "this is going to destroy everything."

Is the Internet melting our brains?

pharazon writes "Global Gaming Factory (GGF), the prospective buyer of file-sharing site The Pirate Bay, has been sued in the Stockholm District Court for bankruptcy due to an unpaid debt of up to 1.4 million SEK (Swedish Crowns, roughly 200k USD). The issuer is GGF's trading partner, Advatar Systems. GGF was recently de-listed from the Aktietorget.se equity market due to financial and reporting failures, but was able to re-list later. The Swedish Tax Office was also claiming large sums of unpaid taxes from the owners of GGF. The discussion in the Swedish media has been skeptical about the Pirate Bay deal due to financing issues."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nate at Sparkfun writes:

A tweeting kegerator! Why? So we can tell when the keg needs replacing, of course. We combine an Arduino with a magnetic reed switch and weight sensor to get our keg's status available to our beer guru. Follow the SparkFunKeg on twitter.

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Earlier this year, at the behest of an anti-piracy group consisting of the usual suspects from the recording industry, a Brazilian court ruled that a company named Cadare Information Technology must implement a filter on the P2P software they distributed on their website to weed out copyrighted content. Cadare was unable comply with the order because they didn't develop the software; they merely offered it for download. The case went back to court, and a Brazilian judge has now decided to ban distribution of the software because it can be used to assist copyright infringement. "He went on to suggest that any website offering the software alongside advertising (i.e, trying to profit from offering it) would be committing a crime, punishable by between two and four years in jail."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Interesting article about the "Right-to-repair bill"....

The federal “cash for clunkers” program succeeded in bringing customers back to new car lots after a long absence, but most people are still driving the car they had. Increasingly they are driving to their local mechanics to make sure those cars last even longer.

That is good news for the independent automotive repair industry because car owners are now willing to spend their money on repair work rather than take on new car payments, and they are saving on those repairs at independent shops.

But while consumers appear content to keep their older cars on the road, they are increasingly discovering that their car’s computerized systems may be conspiring to force them to turn to more expensive dealer repair shops even when those cars are out of warranty.

Most consumers experience this when they see a ‘check engine’ light or another warning that suddenly appears on their dashboard. When they bring it into independent (non-dealer) shops like ours, they simply want the underlying problem fixed so that pesky light goes off.

Sometimes, however, we can’t shut off that light even when we can make the underlying repair.

Most legislation on Beacon Hill is controversial and ultimately difficult to decipher, but Right to Repair is straightforward: You own your car and you should have the right to choose where it gets repaired and not be forced back to dealer mechanics.

House Bill 228 and Senate Bill 124 are controversial only because car manufacturers don’t want car owners to have unfettered access to their own repair information and are fighting it vigorously. That alone should flash a warning light for legislators and consumers that might read: Check Manufacturer’s Motives Now.

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YCombinator creator Paul Graham is the latest "deep thinker" to grasp the deeper economic meaning of infinite goods: they can't be sold. In fact, Graham recognizes that there's never been a real content business. It's always been about selling the scarcity:

Almost every form of publishing has been organized as if the medium was what they were selling, and the content was irrelevant. Book publishers, for example, set prices based on the cost of producing and distributing books. They treat the words printed in the book the same way a textile manufacturer treats the patterns printed on its fabrics.

Economically, the print media are in the business of marking up paper. We can all imagine an old-style editor getting a scoop and saying "this will sell a lot of papers!" Cross out that final S and you're describing their business model. The reason they make less money now is that people don't need as much paper.

He goes on to explore how this applies to music, movies, books, newspapers and software. From there, he comes to the same conclusion many of us have been discussing for years:

What happens to publishing if you can't sell content? You have two choices: give it away and make money from it indirectly, or find ways to embody it in things people will pay for.

The first is probably the future of most current media. Give music away and make money from concerts and t-shirts. Publish articles for free and make money from one of a dozen permutations of advertising. Both publishers and investors are down on advertising at the moment, but it has more potential than they realize.

I'm not claiming that potential will be realized by the existing players. The optimal ways to make money from the written word probably require different words written by different people.

Good stuff and worth reading the whole thing, though I think he misses one key important ingredient. If you take a step back and look at the overall economics of such markets, you quickly realize how much bigger they get when you free the content from the constraints and scarcity of physical media. This is the hardest part for some people to see, at times, but the key to recognizing it is realizing that the content itself is a resource, rather than a final product, and you've just increased the availability and massively decreased the cost of that resource -- and you can then use it (for free!) to make many other things more valuable. That, in a nutshell, is the most exciting part about freeing up digital content.

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Above, Jude Law in fab drag. A still from the forthcoming feature Rage, directed by Sally Potter, in which Law plays a female model named "Minx." The short version: A young student uses his phonecam to shoot interviews with the staff of a New York fashion house, and posts them online without the interviewees' knowledge or consent. A runway accident turns into a murder investigation, then, "denial leads to devastation." Here's a New York Times piece about the film, by Guy Trebay.

Zoolander it is not. Here's a Flickr set with more stills.

You'll spot Steve Buscemi, Judi Dench, John Leguizamo, Dianne Wiest, and Eddie Izzard all in the trailer, which is embedded after the jump.

(Thanks, Karol Martesko-Fenster)

Required weekend listening. Jesse Thorn of The Sound of Young America shares word that a special TSOYA feature episode on The Kasper Hauser Comedy Group is now up.

[The] San Francisco-based sketch comedy group [have] been mainstays of The Sound of Young America, and have appeared on Comedy Central and on This American Life. They're the authors of three hilarious books: "SkyMaul: Happy Crap You Can Buy From A Plane," "Obama's Blackberry," and "Weddings of the Times." They also wrote the website Wonderglen for former Onion editor and Daily Show executive producer Ben Karlin.

On this special hour-long Sound of Young America special, they talk about their careers, and we hear their comedy -- both sketches produced for The Kasper Hauser Comedy Podcast and all-new pieces.

Go have a listen here, or click the embed below.

Authorities are using an assortment of technologies to analyze the contents of property belonging to Phillip Garrido, the accused rapist/kidnapper whose alleged abduction and abuse of Jaycee Dugard is the subject of previous Boing Boing posts. Bone fragments have been found on the patch of land in Antioch where he, his wife, and his victims lived. Along with cadaver dogs, authorities are using "ground-penetrating radar" and forensic archeology tools including magnetometers, in hopes of finding (or ruling out the possibility of) remains of other girls who disappeared around Dugard's age. Here's the website of Bill Silva, an archaeologist assisting in the case. He reported finding an "anomaly in the soil that will require further investigation." Does anyone know more about the specific devices used for this sort of operation? I am interested to know more about the technology involved. Contrary to CSI, none of this is particularly glamorous or fast-paced work.

(PHOTO: Lance Iverson / SF Chronicle. Investigators pore through the back yard of the house next to Phillip Craig and Nancy Garrido.)

Mark Glaser, from PBS's MediaShift invited me and NY Times columnist David Carr to have a back-and-forth debate over email, concerning business models for newspapers -- specifically questioning whether micropayments or a paywall of some kind makes sense. Carr supports some sort of "user pays" model for content, whereas I tend to think the idea would backfire badly. PBS has published the two part debate here:

• Part I, where we disagree about what people will pay for, and talk a bit about newspaper economics (they're bad...).
• Part II, where we continue to go back and forth, but eventually reach a bit of common ground in the middle (no, really!)

There's probably not that much surprising to folks around here if you read this site regularly, but it was a fun debate.

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Jesse Brown, a BoingBoing guest-blogger, is the host of TVO's Search Engine podcast.

Here's what DPA, Germany's national news wire reported this past September 11th 10th:

A terrorist attack occurred in the city of Bluewater, California. The suicide bombers were German rappers, the "Berlin Boys".

A half hour later DPA issued a correction: there had been no bombing. The "Berlin Boys" are not a rap group. The city of Bluewater does not exist.

It was all an elaborate publicity stunt to promote the satirical German film Short Cut to Hollywood. Filmmaker Jan Henrik Stahlberg and his team fooled their entire nation by creating fake websites and videos:

Here's the fake city of Bluewater (link).

Here's the fake local Bluewater news station, KVPK (link).

And here are the "Berlin Boys" with their club hit "Hass":

Wired has a detailed report (link).

Xest writes "More and more reports are appearing about PlayStation 3 consoles failing in a similar way to the earlier models of the Xbox 360, except for Sony, it's the 'Yellow Light of Death.' The BBC has an interesting article which suggests the problem could be almost identical to that which caused the Red Ring of Death — poor soldering connections. From the article: 'Several of those businesses have told Watchdog that the vast majority of consoles they see with the "yellow light of death" can be repaired by heating up specific parts of the circuit board. This process is called solder re-flow. By heating the connections between the components and the circuit board to temperatures in excess of 200 Celsius, the metal solder joints melt, just like they did when the device was first assembled. Console repairers say that this process method is commonly used to repair fractured connections, or dry joints.' But that's not the only rule from Microsoft's playbook Sony has been following; while they have admitted 12,500 out of 2.5 million systems have failed (a convenient 0.5%), they refuse to release full figures of failure rates, citing them as being 'commercially sensitive.' Unfortunately, Sony does not appear to be following Microsoft's lead with regard to an extended warranty, stating that if a PS3 fails after 12 months, it is not their problem. In the UK at least, the Sale of Goods Act would disagree with that statement."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wondering what all the fuss is about hackerspaces? Want to meet cool people from the Ontario area and learn some new skills? Then you should definitely check out MiniSoOnCon, a mini hackerspace conference being held next month in Hamilton, Ontario. From their press release:

Four Hackerspaces in Ontario have joined forces ( Hacklab.TO from Toronto, think|haus from Hamilton, diyode from Guelph, Kwartzlab from Kitchener-Waterloo) to put on a mini hackerspace conference!

On Friday evening October 2nd and all day Saturday October 3rd, think|haus will host talks, how to sessions, and a projects gallery at which anyone who is interested can give a 20 minute talk on something related to creating projects, show people how to build/take apart/modify something, or show off their cool projects.

Some confirmed talks so far are:

• You Let Your Kid Do What? / A brief story about children and taking advantage of applied engineering skills in a positive way.
• Intro to Kite Aerial Photography / Come learn about the kinds of kites you can use to fly your camera, what you need to build your own kite, and how to modify your camera to take pictures automatically.
• RF Countersurveillance / A primer on monitoring police and security frequencies using a trunk-tracking scanner, and how it can assist in penetrating a target.
• OpenWRT Demo / Unboxing, flashing, and demonstrating OpenWRT on an Asus WL-520GU.
• Intro to Electronics Hardware Design By Someone Who Isn't an Expert / It's not nearly as hard as you think it might be, I'll show you the steps and tools you may want to take, and warn you of some of the potential issues you may face.
• Badge Hacking / That badge you're wearing is more than just a blinky light - find out how to do more with the first production badgeduino.

Check out the website and join in as an attendee or participant!

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Way back in 2007, we wrote about a Canadian business man/politician, Wayne Crookes, who was suing a bunch of websites, including Google, Yahoo, MySpace and Wikipedia, because he was upset about what some people had posted about him on those sites, claiming it was defamatory. We found it odd that he was suing these companies, rather than the individuals who supposedly posted defamatory material (oddly, many of the stories that he claimed were defamatory were about him supposedly filing defamation lawsuits!). In some cases, it reached ridiculous levels, such as the fact that the same guy also sued Jon Newton, the operator of P2Pnet.net for merely linking to text that Crookes considered defamatory.

It was troubling enough to sue a company that was hosting a conversation where someone may have said something defamatory, but to take it to another level, where someone merely linking to the actual text as a part of reporting on it was also accused of defamation could have a serious chilling effect on free speech and open communications in Canada. Luckily, last year, a Canadian court found that merely linking to potentially defamatory content is not defamatory. Apparently that ruling was appealed... and the appeals court has agreed that linking to defamatory content is not, itself, defamatory. This is a big win for free expression in Canada. The case could still be appealed, and some are noting that the appeals court ruling still had some problems. There was a dissenting judge who seemed to think that because people may have clicked on the link, just putting up a link was the equivalent of publishing the content on the other side of the link (yikes!). That last link also discusses some other serious problems with libel law in Canada (similar in some ways to the problems in the UK), which is in desperate need of a modern update.

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Scott Simon is on the SUL and boasts in the first sentence of the description of his interview with Clay Shirky that he has nearly 1 million followers.

"Host Scott Simon has nearly 1 million followers on Twitter."

Scott Simon is an expert on Twitter because he has nearly 1 million followers.

He actually has 1,022,105 followers and follows 56.

I once replied to him on Twitter because he said something dorky about blogs on his NPR show. He said that people talk lovingly about their newspaper, it's "my paper," but no one says "my blog."

I told him that I have a blog and I'm proud of it, and I've never had a newspaper. I give money to NPR every year, but I wonder why. He's one of the smartest people there, and as you can see, he'd not that smart.

But I do love Radio Lab. They're on Twitter too. They don't have a million followers. Thanks!

This is just a friendly reminder to use the MAKE Events Calendar to post notices of your upcoming regular or one-time events and meetings. We're getting too many events submitted each week to post them all here, so we're hoping to get people in the habit of posting to the calendar and then, each week, we can post some of the upcoming highlights from the calendar in a single post. Make: Online readers -- be sure to regularly check the calendar to see what events are coming up.

MAKE Events Calendar

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While Mark Cuban's insisting that TV Everywhere is brilliant, it's difficult to see what the benefit is for users. We already noted that the whole program seemed to be something of a mess with no one agreeing on standards, meaning that there might be a bunch of different ones. Oh, and then there's the whole plan to include way too many ads and not let users skip any of them. Meanwhile, Broadband Reports notes that the various players appear to be bickering with each other over who pays for what... and who gets compensated for what. The whole thing is a recipe for a disaster. As Broadband Reports summarizes, "bickering between broadcasters and TV operators, limited selection, walled gardens and unskippable ads" are the sort of things that drive people to other options, such as file sharing -- which is what TV Everywhere was supposed to prevent.

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