RiffRafff writes "Iran is at it again, pre-emptively slowing or cutting Internet access before anticipated student protests." From the article: "Seeking to deny the protesters a chance to reassert their voice, authorities slowed Internet connections to a crawl in the capital, Tehran. For some periods on Sunday, Web access was completely shut down — a tactic that was also used before last month's demonstration. The government has not publicly acknowledged it is behind the outages, but Iran's Internet service providers say the problem is not on their end and is not a technical glitch."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

TorrentFreak has a piece today talking about my efforts to sort out the differences in the RSS used by various BitTorrent websites.

I also posted some ideas for a Torrent namespace that can be used in RSS, or any other XML-based format that accepts extensions, such as Atom and OPML 2.0.

On the Droidie site I look at what it will take to make it the perfect podcatcher.

And a think piece on Protoblogger on the tension between doing something big and getting rich. This will lead to a followup piece that talks about creating incentives for people who don't want to go the corporate route. There really isn't that much money at stake but the really large ideas suffer if they get caught up inside corporations.

Twitter has been down now for about 1/2 hour. 3:30PM Pacific. Oy -- we're so dependent on it. Where would you go now to find out what's up? status.twitter.com has nothing about an outage.

theodp writes "In investigating the question of whether men are smarter than women, British researcher Adrian Furnham came up with some startling results. His analysis of some 30 studies showed that men and women are fairly equal overall in terms of IQ, but women underestimate their own intelligence while men overestimate theirs. Surprisingly, both men and women perceived men being smarter across generations — both sexes believe that their fathers are smarter than their mothers and their grandfathers are more intelligent than their grandmothers. And if there are children, both men and women think their sons are brighter than their daughters."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

kai_hiwatari writes "The recently released KDE SC 4.4 Beta 1 has introduced tabbed windows as a new feature. It is now possible to tab together windows from different applications. This looks like it will be a very good productivity tool. Like the tabbed browsers, this may well end up as a feature in all desktop environments in the years ahead."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes with a New York Times piece about the tumultuous transition to electronic devices, instead of printed materials, for text. "Newspapers and novels are moving briskly from paper to pixels, but textbooks have yet to find the perfect electronic home. They are readable on laptops and smartphones, but the displays can be eye-taxing. Even dedicated e-readers with their crisp printlike displays can’t handle textbook staples like color illustrations or the videos and Web-linked supplements publishers increasingly supply. Now there is a new approach that may adapt well to textbook pages: two-screen e-book readers with a traditional e-paper display on one screen and a liquid-crystal display on the other to render graphics like science animations in color."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Greg Borenstein sez, "This is a video version of a paper I delivered with Jem Axelrod at the 2009 PAMLA Conference about Project Cybersyn, an early 70s socialist pseudo-internet built by British cyberneticist Stafford Beer in Chile. The video explores how Beer's writing, infographics, and industrial design worked together to create a science fictional narrative of omniscience and ominpotence for Salvador Allende's socialist government."

Free As In Beer: Cybernetic Science Fictions (Thanks, Greg!)

An anonymous reader writes "Larry Wall wasn't joking when he said that Perl 6 would be ready by Christmas. Perhaps not this Christmas, but that hasn't stopped a group of people (including head Rakudo developers Patrick Michaud and Jonathan Worthington) from putting together an Advent Calendar, featuring one cool Perl 6 feature every day until Christmas. Topics currently covered include how to get and build Rakudo (the most actively developed and progressed implementation of Perl 6) and the new Metaoperators. For those wondering when Perl 6 will be finished: Rakudo will be having its official 'production release' (dubbed Rakudo Star) April 2010."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Just look at it.

Dazzling Banana an electronic Banana peeler

Undead Ed's plush Mortimer Mutated Bear is sweet and sickly all at once. I love those eyes!

Mortimer Mutated Bear Plush by *Undead-Art* (via Superpunch)

/mandel/

ogaraf writes "Wired has a story about how the site Cryptome.org leaked the price lists for 'lawful spying' activities of Yahoo and other companies, and subsequently received a DMCA takedown notice from Yahoo. The documents, however, are still posted online, and in them you can learn, for instance, that IP logs last for one year, but the original IPs used to create accounts have been kept since 1999. The contents of your Yahoo account are bought for $30 to $40 by law enforcement agencies."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MarkN writes "Facebook has been trumpeting the fact that Farmville, the most popular game on its site, has more users than Twitter, with 69 million playing over a month and 26 million playing each day. Combined with Facebook's announcement that they have hit 350 million users, that means one out of every five people on Facebook is playing Farmville. Gamasutra has a post taking a critical analysis of Farmville, its deceptively slow level grind, how a number of gameplay features end up as simply decorative since they aren't balanced with the benefits of raising crops, and discussing why Farmville succeeds so well in virally spreading itself and addicting people."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yep, you read right! That's FREE shipping on orders of $100 or more. (contiguous US only, not to be combined with other offers). This deal won't last forever, so take advantage of this great offer while you can. Use coupon code ELVES at checkout.

Not sure what to get? Check out all the great gift guides form the Maker Shed!

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dnaumov writes "FreeNAS, a popular, free NAS solution, is moving away from using FreeBSD as its underlying core OS and switching to Debian Linux. Version 0.8 of FreeNAS as well as all further releases are going to be based on Linux, while the FreeBSD-based 0.7 branch of FreeNAS is going into maintenance-only mode, according to main developer Volker Theile. A discussion about the switch, including comments from the developers, can be found on the FreeNAS SourceForge discussion forum. Some users applaud the change, which promises improved hardware compatibility, while others voice concerns regarding the future of their existing setups and lack of ZFS support in Linux."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

markmcb writes "A NASA engineer recently wrote about his disappointment that despite having well-documented coding practices, 'clever' solutions still made the code he has to maintain hard to follow. This got me thinking about the overhead spent at my own company regarding our code. We too have best practices that are documented, but most seem to focus on the basics, e.g., comments, modularity, etc. While those things are good, they don't directly ensure that quality, maintainable code is written. As the author points out, an elegant one-liner coupled with a comment from a few revisions ago makes for a good headache. I'm curious what experience others have had with this, and if you've seen manageable practices that ultimately offer a lot of value to the next programmer down the line who will have to maintain the code."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "CNet reports that 'Google now intends to deliver customized search results even to those searching its site without having signed into a Google account.' This may be what finally drives me to seriously experiment with cookie-free browsing. I consider non-personalized search results to be of value. They quasi-subconsciously give me a better perspective of the full range of information and ideas on the net. That, and I'm also a bit paranoid about a coming world with push-button infrastructure for personalized mis/disinformation."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Is Britain's war on photography coming to an end? After the Independent newspaper got senior officials to admit that anti-terror legislation was being "widely abused...to question and search innocent photographers," the Association of Chief Police Officers has sent out a strongly worded memo to all officers ordering them to cease the practice. The harrassment of photographers by police officers is said to have senior officers "exasperated, depressed and embarrassed," and they characterize officers' belief that anti-terror laws prohibit photography as an "internal urban myth."

Chief Constable Andy Trotter, chairman of Acpo's media advisory group, took the decision to send the warning after growing criticism of the police's treatment of photographers.

Writing in today's Independent, he says: "Everyone... has a right to take photographs and film in public places. Taking photographs... is not normally cause for suspicion and there are no powers prohibiting the taking of photographs, film or digital images in a public place."

He added: "We need to make sure that our officers and Police Community Support Officers [PCSOs] are not unnecessarily targeting photographers just because they are going about their business. The last thing in the world we want to do is give photographers a hard time or alienate the public. We need the public to help us.

"Photographers should be left alone to get on with what they are doing. If an officer is suspicious of them for some reason they can just go up to them and have a chat with them - use old-fashioned policing skills to be frank - rather than using these powers, which we don't want to over-use at all."

Section 44 of the Terrorism Act allows the police to stop and search anyone they want, without need for suspicion, in a designated area. The exact locations of many of these areas are kept secret from the public, but are thought to include every railway station in and well-known tourist landmarks thought to be at risk of terrorist attacks...

Police U-turn on photographers and anti-terror laws (Thanks, Mutant Rob!)

stillnotelf writes "A team based at MIT has won the DARPA Network Challenge. DARPA notes: 'The Challenge has captured the imagination of people around the world, is rich with scientific intrigue, and, we hope, is part of a growing "renaissance of wonder" throughout the nation,' said DARPA's director, Dr. Regina E. Dugan. 'DARPA salutes the MIT team for successfully completing this complex task less than 9 hours after balloon launch.' PDF with (scant) details. Hit the first link above for a map with the locations. How many did your team find?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A group of students at the University of Michigan has formed a smartphone orchestra. Attached to the musicians' wrists, each iPhone runs an app recreating a selected instrument: "Now everybody has a smartphone, the question of how you get an instrument into people's hands has disappeared." [BBC]

The British government has reached new heights of absurdity in stonewalling the release of a report on the efficacy of drug prohibition. The report was commissioned from independent academic researchers, and various activist and citizen groups have spent years filing four separate Freedom of Information requests for it. The government has manufactured excuse after excuse, going out on such bizarre limbs that even the Economist has taken notice.

The reason is that next March the National Audit Office (NAO), a public-spending watchdog, is due to publish a report of its own on local efforts to combat drugs. The Home Office says that to have two reports about drugs out at the same time might confuse the public, and for this reason it is going to keep its report under wraps.

This is believed to be the first time that a public body has openly refused to release information in order to manage the news better. The department argues that releasing its internal analysis now "risks misinterpretation of the findings of the [NAO] report", because its own analysis is from 2007 and predates the NAO's findings. The argument uses section 36 of the FOI act, which provides a broad exemption for information that could "prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs".

The information commissioner, who polices the FOI act, declined to comment because the case was still open. But his predecessor, Richard Thomas, who stepped down in June, questioned the novel defence. "Certainly my office was always quite sceptical of anything which said publishing information is going to confuse the public. If that's the case, normally you need to put out some extra material alongside it to provide adequate explanation. It's not a reason for withholding something."

Transform Drug Policy Foundation: Media Blog: Transform FOI vs Home Office suppression of research - Part V (in The Economist ) (Thanks, Steve!)

ACKyushu writes "Researchers from Helsinki University of Technology (Finland), University of New South Wales (Australia), and University of Melbourne (Australia) have succeeded in building a working transistor whose active region comprises only a single phosphorus atom in silicon. The results have just been published in Nano Letters. The working principles of the device are based on sequential tunneling of single electrons between the phosphorus atom and the source and drain leads of the transistor. The tunneling can be suppressed or allowed by controlling the voltage on a nearby metal electrode with a width of a few tens of nanometers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Will Fusion Garage's Chandrasekar "Chandra" Rathakrishnan stick to open sourcing the CrunchPad? Maybe someone can ask at the video call on Monday... Chandra if you're Google alerting this, there's an overview below, so far no one at TechCrunch have replied to our emails... If it's not going to be open source as promised, that's fine - just say it.

SF Biz times... The man whom TechCrunch blog network founder and editor Michael Arrington blamed for killing his CrunchPad hardware project has scheduled a video call with reporters and industry analysts for Monday, according to a Silicon Valley public relations firm.

Chandrasekar "Chandra" Rathakrishnan, founder and CEO of Fusion Garage, will speak to reporters and demonstrate "the device" both in a video call and in private briefings scheduled for later Monday at the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco, said Megan Alpers of San Jose-based McGrath/Power Public Relations.

Previously:

The CrunchPad, named Popular Mechanic's 10 most brilliant products of the year (although it never came out) is not happening. Mike writes -

The entire project self destructed over nothing more than greed, jealousy and miscommunication... I'm enraged, embarrassed, and just...sad.

I bet there's more to this story... Here's what Ladyada who makes hardware thinks...

Although it may seem like an irrelevant point, I'm guessing the price was a big contributor to the project death. Why? because when you say up front (with no experience in hardware/manufacturing design) that you're going to sell it for $x the scramble then becomes "how can each party squeeze margin out?" When theres very little margin, parties are more willing to bluff knowing that they can walk away and there was almost no $ on the table. Hardware has this problem, and I've seen it so many times, that the founder prices the hardware at only a bit (say ~30%) above the parts cost, not realizing the tons of NRE expenses, ballooning BOM, contractor costs, and the hundreds of other ways the price can easily double. Then they're stuck: the investors/contract manufacturer/designer/customer hates them. That leads to abandonment. Please please please, if you decide to do any kind of hardware, add an extra 40% margin on top of whatever you pick. If you don't need it, you can always cut the price later! :)

When there was a lot of buzz about the CrunchPad many curious gadget fans asked me about their "open source" and "open source hardware" tablet. I wasn't sure if it was going to happen, it's expensive, margins are tough, doing hardware is hard. A lot of web commenters said "exactly, this is so easy now" just get some screens, load up linux and have it boot in to a browser, it's a weekend project, DONE!". For folks who do hardware there's more to it than that beyond demo-ware.

I also was worried about the marketing of the CrunchPad said "open source" just to get good will and support, this happens a lot.

Here's what was said...

In the founding July 21, 2008 manifesto "We Want A Dead Simple Web Tablet For $200. Help Us Build It. Michael Arrington wrote: "So let's design it, build a few and then open source the specs so anyone can create them." "If everything works well, we'd then open source the design and software and let anyone build one that wants to."

On the "The End Of The CrunchPad" post Mike writes...

It was so close I could taste it. Two weeks ago we were ready to publicly launch the CrunchPad. The device was stable enough for a demo. It went hours without crashing. We could even let people play with the device themselves - the user interface was intuitive enough that people "got it" without any instructions. And the look of pure joy on the handful of outsiders who had used it made the nearly 1.5 year effort completely worth it.

This sounds like it's in a good spot to open up the designs, right? So as a follow up I've asked if they're going to stick to what they said. I'm hoping they publish something.

I posted my question on TechCrunch...

mike - phil from MAKE magazine here. you said many times that the project was an open source project (the hardware and the software) - where are the files, the schematics, the source code, the PCB files, etc? is it correct to assume that "fusion garage" is not going to release any source or continue this project as an open source (software/hardware project)? if that's the case it seems like "open source" was used again just to get good will and marketing and not really put any value in.

I also sent TechCrunch an email directly (12/1/2009 - no reply yet).

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John Bryson writes "Eating less of one amino acid might lengthen your life. There have been lots of previous studies showing that many species live long on highly restricted calories, but a lot of this benefit may be possible by only restricting one amino acid. Amino acids that have shown this have been tryptophan and methionine. A recent study, published online December 2 in Nature, a highly respected journal, may help explain some of the health benefits of restricted-calorie diets."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read this account of James Love's conversation with Ambassador Ron Kirk, the head US Trade Representative, on the question of why the Draconian Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is taking place in secret. Love cornered Kirk on a United Airlines flight from Geneva to DC following a WTO Ministerial meeting. Love asks Kirk why the treaty isn't public, and Kirk's answers are -- at best -- total weaselling and at worst fabrications.

I had a chance to talk to Kirk about the secrecy of the ACTA agreement. He said the ACTA text would be made public, "when it is finished." I told him it that was too late, and the public wanted the text out now, before it is too late to influence anything.

Kirk said he was aware that there were those who wanted the text public, but the issue of transparency was "about as complicated as it can get," and Kirk didn't want people "walking away from the table," which would likely happen if the text was public, he said.

I said that it was untrue that IPR negotiations are normally secret, mentioning as examples that drafts of the other IPR texts, including the proposed WIPO treaty for disabilities and the climate change agreement language on IPR, as well as several drafts of the FTAA text and the 1996 WIPO copyright treaties had been public. Kirk said that ACTA "was different" and the topics being negotiated in ACTA were "more complex."

I brought up to Kirk that the USTR had shown ACTA text to dozens of corporate lobbyists and all of its trading partners in the ACTA negotiation, and the text was only secret from the public. Kirk did say USTR was discussing this issue with the White House and its trading partners, but that was about all he could say at that moment.

Ambassador Kirk: People would be "walking away from the table" if the ACTA text is made public (via The Command Line)

coondoggie writes "Looking to build strategic satellites in day if need be, rather than months, the Air Force is pushing forward with what it calls plug-and-play spacecraft. This week it awarded a $500,000 order to Northrop Grumman to begin designing the plug-and-play spacecraft 'bus' which will offer standard interfaces for a variety of payload components, much like a laptop computer that immediately recognizes new hardware when it's plugged in, Northrop stated. The order was awarded under a contract that has a ceiling of $200 million."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ABC has at last found a venue for Adam Lambert wherein the probability of theatrical irrumatio approaches zero.

Iran has warned Switzerland of 'consequences' following the recent referendum there on minaret construction. Characteristic Ahmadinejadian subtlety! But here's a thought: when scripted opprobrium flies around the world, it's usually between governments or other impersonal entities. Given Switzerland's unusual direct-democracy, however, where people can enact laws even when the government is against them, doesn't this mean that the condemnations are, for once, aimed directly at a nation's public rather than the government that represents them?

Bethany Halford's column in this week's Chemical & Engineering News drew my attention to BEYONDbones, an official blog from the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences, and particularly to a couple of chemistry-related holiday projects. This page teaches how to make a crystalline ornament from pipe cleaners and saturated borax, and this one, how to use washable markers and a coffee filter to make tie-dye-like paper ornaments based on the principle of paper chromatography.

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shift writes "I've used multiple monitors for years (currently 3) and find that Linux is lacking in power tools for such setups. Even Windows 7 has added the feature to move a window from screen to screen with keyboard shortcuts. Are any of the major desktop environments adding such features? I'm still stuck on FVWM and have define functions to swap the contents of screens as well as move windows from screen to screen and so on. But this just seems like such basic functionality people would want in multi-screen setups that I'm surprised I don't find any of these features in our latest desktop environments."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's been a while since my last build journal, mostly because the finish takes a few days to apply, and yet another few days to fully cure. I'm just happy it's now done! I want to start building... and printing!

First up, assembling the pulleys. If you purchased a kit, it includes a set of 3D-printed pulleys. This makes the pulleys really easy to assemble. However, there are a few tips and tricks that I'll cover.

First, make sure there are no extra bits of plastic in the pulley opening. If there are, carefully scrape them off with a hobby knife. Next, use one of the screws from the hardware burrito, along with a nut, to help push the bearing into the pulley. Screw the nut onto the bolt about 1/4" and then press the bolt head firmly until the bearing is completely seated. It's a snug fit, but you should be able to press it in fairly easily.

That's it! All the pulleys are assembled. If you are making your own pulleys from laser cut parts, check out this guide. Now it's time to apply a finish to your enclosure.

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